The research grants, totaling 4,000 euros, serve to promote clinical research and innovation in medical practice.
At the 40th National MGF Meeting in Vilamoura, Research Grants were awarded under the partnership between the Portuguese Association of General and Family Medicine (APMGF) and the Agency for Clinical Research and Biomedical Innovation (AICIB).
The Person-Centered Research group, led by physician and principal investigator Bruno Heleno, won two of these grants, one to promote behavioral change in physicians for finding online information based on scientific evidence, and another to assess the needs of informal caregivers of elderly people in Portugal.
Catarina Viegas Dias, specialist in General and Family Medicine (MGF) and researcher at NMS and CHRC, will lead one of the projects, saying that "we intend to evaluate the effectiveness of 3 interventions in different domains of behavior (ability, motivation, opportunity), as well as a combined triple intervention in changing the behavior of GP interns to a practice based on the best available scientific evidence". The application of this project will support physicians in changing their behavior towards a clinical practice based on the best available evidence.
Rita Lopes Silva, also a doctor specializing in MGF and a researcher in the same group, will lead a project to assess the unmet needs in economic, health and social terms of informal caregivers of the elderly in Portugal. "Knowing that in the future in Portugal there will be an increase in the number of dependent people, there will also necessarily be an increase in the number of caregivers. It is urgent to understand how programs and policies can be created to support this population, adapted to the Portuguese reality", says the doctor-researcher.
Both grants will allow the financial execution of the projects, either in hiring human resources or in obtaining the necessary services for their development. In addition to principal investigator Bruno Heleno, Clara Jasmins, Ana Rita Jesus Maria and David Rodrigues will also be part of the teams for these projects.
Find out more about Catarina Viegas Dias' research in our Science Communication feature, A Pinch of Science.