What does snow and neurosurgery have in common? The last few days STRATUM went all the way to northern Finland to join the ECSA2026 conference in Oulu. Part of the team left the sunny and already warming up Berlin to arrive in Oulu where the winter was still in full bloom and the snow was as high as our knees. Turns out this was the perfect environment to talk about co-creation and citizen science in health research.
We had the honour of kicking off the conference with the panel “Co-creation across borders: Citizen science for inclusive health innovation“ . STRATUM presented its co-creation activities and then moderated the rest of the panel where we heard very interesting stories, from social laboratories where patients and other stakeholders work together in neurodegenerative healthcare, working together with families and patients of rare diseases, starting the conversation on mental health issues with teenagers through technological co-design, promoting well-being in nursing homes through co-creation and looking for antimicrobial solutions through citizen science.
This panel helped us break the ice and set the tone for the rest of the conference. Now that we are back in Berlin, we left the winter behind, and instead brought back with us the warmth of meeting partners and colleagues in person, our brains full of ideas and inspiration which we hope will translate into the work we continue to do at STRATUM.
