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The SEDENTEXCT Communication Action Plan (CAP) to be implemented by the Consortium during the lifespan of the project is a strategy for both external and internal communication. The CAP aims to communicate with those inside and outside the research, medical physics and dental communities.

A draft CAP was a discussion item at the project “kick-off” meeting in January 2008. This allowed further input of material and a consensus to be reached on the CAP priorities and what is achievable.

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Contents:

1. Audience
2. Communication tools
3. Internal project communication

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1. Audience

SEDENTEXCT aims to communicate with those inside and outside the research, medical physics and dental communities. The 2003, the EU Berlin Declaration stated that "our mission of disseminating knowledge is only half complete if the information is not made widely and readily available to society".  Furthermore, in December 2006 EURAB  (European Research Advisory Board) recommended that the Commission “consider mandating all researchers funded under [the seventh Framework Programme] to lodge their publications resulting from EC-funded research in an open access repository as soon as possible after publication, to be made accessible within 6 months at the latest". Our collaboration fully supports the sentiments behind these declarations.

The project is focused upon producing a comprehensive set of guidelines and training packages aimed directly at users of CBCT.  WP6 objective is to set up a multi-level web-based resource for dental CBCT, with open access. We believe that this will provide the most easily accessible and effective way of disseminating our results. In many ways, this web site aims to follow the pathway laid by the Emerald and Emit training resources (http://emerald2.eu). General dissemination of detailed scientific results will follow the usual form of presentations at conferences and publications in peer-reviewed publications. We also look forward to contributing to SINAPSE (Scientific Information Advice for Policy Support in Europe http://ec.europa.eu/sinapse/sinapse) network. We would welcome the opportunity to take part in future “Communicating European Research” International Conferences.

We are utilising existing contacts with user groups and key stakeholders as listed below:

 

The user groups of the knowledge arising from the project results consist of:

• General dentists and radiographers
  Dissemination of results via professional journals and national association meetings will reach a proportion of dentists and radiographers. However, many health professionals do not read scientific journals and do not partake of continuing professional education. This emphasises the importance of our open access web-based method of dissemination. Bearing in mind that internet access is still not universal, we will also target this important group by exploiting access to professional ‘free’ literature that exists in most member states.

• Dental Radiology specialists
  Dissemination of results via learned societies, professional meetings and publications will be essential if knowledge from the project is to be transferred to ‘real world’ healthcare. Several of the individuals involved in this application (Horner, Jacobs, Lindh, Tsiklakis) are members of the Executive Committee of the European Academy of Dental and Maxillofacial Radiology (EADMFR) and others are ordinary members. Tsiklakis is currently EADMFR Immediate Past-President. The aim of the EADMFR is to promote, advance and improve clinical practice, education and/or research specifically related to the specialty of dental and maxillofacial radiology within Europe, and to provide a forum for discussion, communication and the professional advancement of its members. This is an ideal means of dissemination of our findings to a key stakeholder group which, in turn, can facilitate an information cascade down to national specialist associations.

• Medical Physicists
  We will target European and international conferences on Medical/Health Physics for dissemination, but a key aspect will be raising awareness of our Training modules. We will seek accreditation for our WP6 output’s training modules from the European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics. We anticipate that this ‘seal of approval’ will facilitate acceptance of our work and add to its value in the European dimension. Beyond this we will target national conferences and scientific meetings of our own medical physics organisations, including the Institute of Medical Physics and Engineering (UK), the Hellenic Association of Medical Physicists, Romanian Medical Physicists Association, Société Bèlge des Physiciens des Hospitaux, Belgische Vereniging Ziekenhuis Fysici and the Swedish Hospital Physicists Association.

• Public
  Public involvement in science is a major commitment of the European Union. The primary mode of dissemination here will be the web site. Health-related websites are known to receive more ‘hits’ than any others. By ensuring good access via internet search engines we anticipate a significant degree of public recognition and involvement. We will pay particular attention to the results of the CIPAST (Citizen Participation in Science and Technology) project (http://www.cipast.org/), both current and at the conclusion of their project in 2008, in developing public involvement during the lifetime of our project. In particular, we will attempt to incorporate the experiences and methodologies presented by CIPAST in their “toolkit”:
  http://www.viwta.be/files/30890_ToolkitENGdef.pdf

• Industry (manufacturers and distributors of dental x-ray equipment)
  We hope that the industrial membership of the European Federation of Organisations for Medical Physics will be targeted through our strategy for targeting Medical Physics professionals (above) but, as this is a key target in terms of raising standards and the numbers of manufacturers and distributors of dental equipment is finite, we will employ a direct targeting approach. This will be by direct communication and encouragement to adopt the quality standards set as part of the project. Initial contacts with CBCT manufacturers have already been made in June 2008 at the 11th Congress of the EADMFR in Budapest.
  

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2. Communication tools

This section addresses the mix of communications tools that will be developed as part of the SEDENTEXCT CAP in order to address the audiences identified in Section 1.

Conferences
We have developed a list of international conferences and workshops where Consortium members can present the SEDENTEXCT project, its activities and results. As the duration of the project is over three years, some opportunities may yet become apparent, but aspects of SEDENTEXCT may be suitable for presentation at the following international conferences:

Event	Location	Date
International Conference on Medical Physics	Dubai	April 14th-16th 2008
11th European Congress of DentoMaxilloFacial Radiology	Budapest	June 25th-28th 2008
FDI: World Dental Federation Congress	Stockholm	September 24th-27th 2008
3rd Baltic Scientific Conference in Dentistry	Vilnius	November 6-8th  2008
European Congress on Radiology	Vienna	Spring 2009
EOS 85th Congress of European Orthodontic Society	Helsinki	10th-14th June 2009
17th International Congress of Dentomaxillofacial Radiology	Amsterdam	June 28th-July 1st 2009
11th EFOMP Congress	TBA	2009
MEDNET 2010: 14th World Congress on the Internet in Medicine	TBA	Autumn 2009
European Congress on Radiology	Vienna	Spring 2010
12th European Congress of DentoMaxilloFacial Radiology	Istanbul	Summer 2010
EOS 86th Congress of European Orthodontic Society	Ljubliana	15th 19th June 2010
Association for Dental Education in Europe	TBA	Autumn 2010
European Congress on Radiology	Vienna	Spring 2011
18th International Congress of Dentomaxillofacial Radiology	TBA	Summer 2011
12th EFOMP Congress	TBA	2011

Partners will be encouraged to present SEDENTEXCT in conferences, seminars and workshops at international and national levels.

Scientific publications
The SEDENTEXCT consortium will promote and encourage the publication of results from the project in highly-ranked peer-reviewed scientific journals. A publication list will be maintained at the project website.

Web portal and intranet
A web portal has been established (sedentexct.eu) that will act as a centralised single access point for project components. This has consistent headers and footers, colour schemes, icons and logos which will give the user a feel and sense of consistency, uniformity and ease of navigation. It will establish descriptive information of the project, events, results and publications of SEDENTEXCT to ensure dissemination to a wide audience. Members of the consortium will be encouraged to provide a SEDENTEXCT link on each Beneficiary’s website. A secure intranet has been provided for the consortium (see part 3, below).

As WP6 of the SEDENTEXCT project is aimed at providing a public internet resource of information about CBCT, the web portal can be visualised as shown below:

 

Newsletter
A newsletter will be published on line via the web portal at least every six months. The Co-ordinator will be responsible for organising the edition of the newsletter. In addition to this, newsletters will be emailed to specific targets in Industry to heighten awareness of project aims, progress and results.

Press releases
The European Commission will be informed, one month in advance of any publications or initiatives (e.g. articles in journals, press releases, conference papers) by the consortium which may have social, economic and/or political impact or which could trigger significant media interest. All public-oriented communications concerning SEDENTEXCT will acknowledge that the Project is supported by the European Union and state the following (or other agreed statement) :

The Collaborative project SEDENTEXCT is supported by funding under the Seventh Euratom Programme of the European Union.

Media relations and press releases may be handled by the individual beneficiaries but the Co-ordinator will always be made aware of such events. The Press Office of Beneficiary 1 (UNIMAN) offers excellent facilities for media relations and will be used preferentially wherever possible
(http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/contact/).

Ad hoc communication activities
The SEDENTEXCT consortium will take advantage of opportunities offered by ediutorial coverage in press, on television or on radio and will participate in occasional communication activities at conferences and workshops.

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3. Internal communication

Web site – intranet
The web site is a key working tool to ensure intra-partnership communication on project-related issues. An intranet area is reached from the home page of the project website, protected by a username and password reserved for project partners and the European Commission’s Scientific Officer.

The intranet service allows circulation of documents and the schedule of activities. A section for project documents and project events is reserved. The interactive facility will aid in raising awareness of progress, discussion of project challenges and in refinement of the work programme.

Project meetings
To improve communication between project partners, eight project meetings are scheduled, during the 42 months of the project, for members of the Consortium. The first meeting will be held at Month 6, to coincide with a key International Congress. Thereafter, meetings will occur at approximately 6-monthly intervals.

The timetable is, therefore:

Project Meetings

“Kick off” meeting	Month 1	Leuven
Project meeting A (PA):	Month 6	Budapest
PB:	Month 13	Athens
PC:	Month 18	Malmő (provisional)
PD:	Month 25	Manchester (provisional)
PE:	Month 30	Vilnius (provisional)
PF:	Month 37	Cluj-Napoca (provisional)
PG (Final meeting):	Month 42	Leuven

Other internal communication methods
In addition to the intranet and the scheduled project meetings, all partners will communicate with each other using the daily communication instruments, via email and telephone. Mutual communication concerning the whole project will be cc to all participants wherever possible.

As regards communication flows on important issues, internal communication should respect the organisational structure of the project. Each partner first communicates with the relevant Work package leader institution, responsible for the efficient implementation of tasks within their WP, in co-ordination with the activities carried out within the other WPs.

 

KH (Project Co-Ordinator)
June 2008

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Download the Communication Action Plan document:

• PDF (102 KB) or
• Word (76.5 KB)