Around 100 professionals from the fields of youth, education, health and public administration participated in a training day on knowledge transfer, co-organized with ‘Dinamia’ at the Campus de las Lagunillas.
18/1/2024.- The Network for the Promotion of Health and Emotional Well-being of Young People (PROEMO), led by the University of Jaén (UJA), has presented several initiatives for the promotion of health and emotional well-being of young people, in the framework of a training day of knowledge transfer, co-organized with the Provincial Association of Youth Technicians ‘DINAMIA’ in the Campus Las Lagunillas.
The opening ceremony was chaired by the Vice Chancellor of Culture of the UJA, Marta Torres, who in her speech recalled that this week, from the PROEMO Network, held a working meeting with the Secretary of State for Youth and Children, Ruben Perez, and the Director General of the Institute of Youth of Spain (INJUVE), Margarita Guerrero, in order to assess possible synergies and present to the team of the Ministry of Youth and Children different interdisciplinary initiatives, led or actively involved in the UJA, for the promotion of youth and children, Margarita Guerrero, in order to assess possible synergies and present to the team of the Ministry of Youth and Children different interdisciplinary initiatives, led or in which UJA actively participates, for the promotion of health and emotional well-being of young people. “This work team confirms, through its intense and important research, the difficult situation of mental health in adolescents, aggravated after the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic”.
Likewise, he described as “key” the collaboration of the PROEM Network with INJUVE, materialized in different actions that lead to the collaboration of INJUVE as External Advisory Council of all the Network’s projects. “It is crucial to prevent emotional problems in the adolescent population,” said Marta Torres, who announced the programming, from the Vice President of Culture of the UJA, the organization of a film series in April on mental health, “a sign of our concern about this issue.
The Vice Chancellor has been accompanied by the General Director of INJUVE, Margarita Guerrero, who has expressed “the support of INJUVE to the PROEMO Network as an active member of its External Advisory Council”, and “its concern for prevention and the need to generate practical tools for our youth to be resilient in a scenario of uncertainty as they face, marked by the difficult access to housing or decent employment”.
Luis Joaquín García, professor of Psychology at the UJA and main responsible for the PROEMO Network, and Antonio Lara, president of ‘Dinamia’, as co-organizers of the conference, participated in the opening session. Luis Joaquin Garcia has stressed the importance of “society to know the resources available to them, and above all, the importance of investing in emotionally healthy young people, to combat the massive increase of emotional difficulties in this area of the population that stands at around a million and a half adolescents at risk of emotional problems. Meanwhile, Antonio Lara has shown “the eagerness of ‘Dinamia’ to continue contributing from the collective of youth technicians to improve the service provided to young people through training”.
Level Up, DAREMOS, PROCARE, Digitas and PROADEMO, protagonists of the event
After the inauguration, the UJA researcher Manuel Vivas has deepened around the European project Level Up and the practical materials generated through it for the development of skills for the success of young people in life, in studies and in their access to working life.
Secondly, researchers José Antonio Muela, Belén Díez and Luis Joaquín García have developed some tips to detect and help a young person with, or at risk of suffering, emotional difficulties through the results obtained in the DAREMOS initiative, focused on the early detection of adolescents at high risk of developing emotional problems such as anxiety or depression.
Subsequently, David Jiménez, Laura Zafra and José Antonio Muela explained the keys to the PROCARE initiative. This is a pioneering project worldwide in the field of prevention and personalized medicine as it is the first selective prevention program aimed at adolescents between 12 and 18 years of age at risk of suffering emotional problems. In 2021, it helped around 1,500 adolescents and, recently, it has helped more than 1,000 adolescents in the Balearic Islands, and it is currently being implemented in the municipality of Marmolejo in Jaén. In this regard, the Councilor for Governance, Tourism, Promotion and Youth of the City Council of Marmolejo, Pilar Lara explained the experience of the implementation of PROCARE among the young population of her municipality.
Then, UJA researchers Lourdes Espinosa and Adelina Ocaña presented the tools and resources for the emotional literacy of young people and families implemented through the Digitas project. Among others, they talked about the creation of documentaries such as ‘Ansiados’, podcasts such as ‘Socialmente’, or sound fiction works such as ‘Miedo a Diario’.
Finally, UJA researchers Manuel Vivas, David Jiménez and Jesús Sánchez have outlined the objectives of the PROADEMO project and the PROEMO roadmap, whose purpose is, on the one hand, to develop a training manual to train youth, educational and health staff on how to emotionally help adolescents, and on the other hand, to update the report made in 2018 on the state of health and emotional well-being of the young population facing 2025.
Around 100 professionals from the field of youth, education, health and public administration have attended the presentations and the debate around it, which has also counted with the participation of Victoria Rodríguez, head of service of Interministerial Programs of INJUVE.
