Pawel Sowa

I work at the Department of Population Medicine and Lifestyle Diseases Prevention (Medical University of Bialystok), where we run the BIALYSTOK PLUS project. I have a Masters degree in Public Health and European Union Law. In 2017 I obtained a PhD in health sciences. My research interests include preventive medicine, with particular emphasis on physical activity and effort, but also the implementation of ICT systems and their impact on health care. I am a member of the Polish Society of Cardiology, European Society of Cardiology, European Society of Preventive Cardiology and the Polish Society of Social Medicine and Public Health.

In JoinUs4Health I am responsible for work package 4 (Institutional Change), the aim of which will be to create and consolidate institutional changes enabling the inclusion of society in the process of co-creating science. It will be a process composed of many elements, which are at the same time elements to other project work packages. The final institutional change will be based on the success in implementing the assumed plans.

Most of all I am looking forward to observe how, based on cohort studies, we raise the level of social research intelligence. A very interesting aspect is the possibility of creating a project in three European centers simultaneously and studying how the populations living in them behave.

The key question in Join Us4Health for me is: To what extent can public involvement in the process of co-creating science change the attitude of scientists to the perception of social problems. Perhaps we will find new methods of building public health interventions?