The CoSIE project gave to the Local Health Authority of Reggio Emilia the opportunity to introduce co-creation in the organization of services and preventive initiatives aimed at childhood well-being. In the Italian pilot, co-creation is understood as a process to plan and define public services specifically aimed at reducing the mismatch between beneficiary needs and provided services.
In the Italian pilot project of co-creation, people were not simply conceived as actors waiting for “something to do”, but as emerging protagonists of new forms of participation in society, strongly enabled by technological developments. In this way, co-creation has built a more trusting relationship within the organizations themselves and with the several stakeholders.
In the process of co-creating the dialogue within the various organizations were facilitated by the coordination of the Consulting Committee.
The Consulting Committee involves around 45 persons in representation of a plurality of stakeholders in the territorial area of Reggio Emilia, such as: a) several Departments/Units of the Local Health Agency; b) some Departments of the Municipality; c) public schools; d) public libraries; e) many civil society organizations (foundations, associations, sports clubs, organizations of volunteers, etc.) and decided to remain open to new participants (i.e., stakeholders and/or institutions) for the duration of the project and to remain active after the end of the project to coordinate local policies on childhood well-being.
It should be noted that in the original Action Plan of the pilot, the role of this Committee was a passive one. The Committee was expected to be the place where the leading actors of the pilot (the Steering Committee comprising the two pilot partners and the University) would present updates, inform about implementation, and ask for opinions, suggestions, comments, etc. Instead, in meeting after meeting the Consulting Committee acquired a more active role and it became the actual “governing and planning” body of the project. The process succeeded in transforming the Consulting Committee into an active community that brought together different sectors, favoring synergy and operating in a “health in all policy “ perspective.
The process of co-creation generates the opportunity to revise many services provided (not only by the health service) for the citizens. All the stakeholders adopt a new point of view that always takes into account the impact on child health and well-being and they have tried to favour the physical activities and healthy choices for the children.
The involvement of families (namely the direct users of the service) was considered as central.
In that respect, the Italian project has not found any parent associations that focused on healthy lifestyle, obesity prevention, or child well-being; the found associations focused on abuse prevention, issues related to divorced parents, and the protection of minors. This lack of parent association representative made it extremely important to activate other means of co-creation to receive the users and beneficiaries’ inputs. The limited representation of final users on the consulting committee resulted in an orientation more toward co-governance than co-creation. Nevertheless the fact that many members of the consulting committee were simultaneously stakeholders and potential users made our co-creation process different from all the previous experiences of co-creation in health interventions (including apps and eHealth products), where end users provided input on the needs and tested the prototypes but were not involved in the identification of the aims or in the conduction of the project.
The object of the co-creation was an App and the the co-creation process of the App has requested to listen to the different groups who were involved. According to the different functionalities that the Consulting Committee has identified for the App, six working groups have been created and collaborated during the life of the pilot in Reggio Emilia on different themes relevant for the App: anticipatory guides for families who have a baby, map of physical activity opportunities, food and nutrition, illness and domestic incidents, integration with the platform BambiniMoltoinForma, vaccination.
More details here [Giorgi Rossi P, Ferrari F, Amarri S, Bassi A, Bonvicini L, et Al; Describing the Process and Tools Adopted to Cocreate a Smartphone App for Obesity Prevention in Childhood: Mixed Method Study. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth. 2020 Jun 8;8(6):e16165. doi: 10.2196/16165. PMID: 32357123; PMCID: PMC7308901]