Diseño Social strengthens coordination, communication, and digital development

within IPOV – Respectful Care during the 2024 secondments in Udine

Between 22 July and 30 August 2024, María Hidalgo Rudilla and Valeria Hiraldo Cuevas, from Diseño Social (Spain), carried out their respective secondments at the Università degli Studi di Udine (UNIUD, Italy) within the framework of the European project IPOV – Respectful Care. Both mobilities were hosted by Patrizia Quattrocchi, further reinforcing the collaboration between Diseño Social and UNIUD at a particularly important stage for strategic coordination, internal project organization, digital platform improvement, and communication content planning.

IPOV – Respectful Care is an international project funded by the European Union that brings together academic institutions, social organizations, and professionals from different countries around a shared objective: to analyse, make visible, and contribute to transforming realities related to obstetric violence and respectful maternity care. The project is grounded in an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach that connects research, training, communication, advocacy, and resource production in order to promote pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care based on rights, dignity, evidence, and respect for women.

The importance of IPOV lies not only in its research dimension, but also in its commitment to generating social and institutional impact. Through its different lines of work, the project seeks to bring together scientific knowledge, professional experience, regulatory frameworks, transformative initiatives, and the voices of women and communities in order to better understand the problem and advance meaningful change. In this sense, the project’s digital platform, dissemination materials, audiovisual content, and cooperation among partners are all part of the same strategy: to build a useful and accessible knowledge base that remains closely connected to practice.

Within this framework, secondments play a central role. In HORIZON-MSCA Staff Exchanges projects, a secondment is a temporary mobility period that allows members of one partner institution to work for a defined period within another organization in the consortium. These stays are not simple visits: they are spaces for intensive work, knowledge exchange, practical cooperation, and institutional strengthening. Through them, the project is enriched by direct contact between teams, mutual learning, and the possibility of developing concrete tasks in an international and collaborative environment.

Secondments also ensure that knowledge circulates not only through documents or online meetings, but also through shared experience, direct observation, strategic discussion, and joint production. They are a key tool for aligning perspectives, reviewing progress, identifying needs, developing materials, and building stronger cooperation among institutions with different profiles and contexts. In a project such as IPOV, where research, communication, social action, and the European dimension intersect, these mobilities are especially valuable.

During the 2024 secondments in Udine, María Hidalgo Rudilla and Valeria Hiraldo Cuevas took part in a series of coordination and communication meetings together with Federica Toldo and Patrizia Quattrocchi. These sessions focused on reviewing the overall progress of the project, identifying issues requiring specific attention, and designing a strategic plan for the upcoming phases. This coordination work was essential for maintaining the project’s overall coherence, anticipating possible challenges, and jointly defining priorities.

Both researchers were also involved in the discussion and organization of project documentation within the secure storage system of respectfulcare.eu, an essential task for ensuring a clear, orderly, and useful documentary structure for the consortium as a whole. Good internal organization of files, working materials, and strategic documentation is often not very visible, yet it is crucial in complex international projects. It facilitates collaboration among partners, improves traceability of progress, and contributes to more rigorous and efficient management.

Another important area of work during this stay was the improvement of the project’s digital platform. Both María and Valeria contributed to enhancing the platform through user interface updates, new functionalities, and the optimization of key features. These improvements are valuable not only from a technical perspective, but also from a strategic one: a clearer, more functional, and more accessible platform makes it possible to disseminate project content more effectively, facilitate navigation for different types of users, and strengthen the public impact of IPOV.

In the case of María Hidalgo Rudilla, her contribution was particularly linked to the strategic dimension of communication and to the construction of messages that were clear and fully aligned with the project’s dissemination goals. In addition to participating in the review of overall progress, the identification of issues to address, and the planning of next steps, she worked to define key messages, ensure the clarity and engagement of the content, and align the scripts with the project’s strategic dissemination objectives. This work is especially relevant in a project that addresses complex and sensitive issues, where communicating well also means making knowledge more accessible, supporting awareness-raising, and extending the reach of project results.

For her part, Valeria Hiraldo Cuevas carried out specific work related to audiovisual content planning and the future direction of the communication strategy. In addition to sharing the tasks of document organization, platform enhancement, and strategic project review, she contributed to planning video scripts, coordinating the editing of audiovisual content, and discussing future communication strategies. This work helps strengthen the project’s capacity to produce rigorous, understandable, and engaging dissemination materials capable of reaching a wide range of audiences beyond the strictly academic sphere.

Taken together, these 2024 mobilities helped advance key areas for the consolidation of IPOV – Respectful Care: internal coordination, document management, digital development, message clarity, and the planning of future communication content. They also highlighted the value of international collaboration based on close working relationships between partner institutions and on the combination of complementary profiles and expertise.

The stay of María Hidalgo Rudilla and Valeria Hiraldo Cuevas at the Università degli Studi di Udine illustrates how secondments can become spaces of genuine project strengthening. They not only allow for the implementation of concrete tasks, but also help build a shared vision, improve processes, review tools, and reinforce the human network that sustains the consortium’s work. In European projects such as IPOV, this relational and strategic dimension is as important as the tangible outputs themselves.

Through actions such as these, IPOV – Respectful Care continues to consolidate an international network committed to research, social transformation, and the promotion of more respectful, informed, and rights-based maternity care. Each secondment contributes knowledge, coordination, learning, and new opportunities to continue building a project with real impact both within and beyond academia.

We extend an invitation to foster connections and mutual support within our social media community. Kindly consider following one another and participating in discussions using the designated hashtag #ipovrespectfulcare. Share your insights and experiences to contribute to the collective dialogue.

Funded by the European Union Programme HORIZON-MSCA-2022-Staff Exchange. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.