The project "The indirect impact of the pandemic: determinants and consequences of access to public primary care services during the COVID-19 pandemic" has received one of the twenty-two grants from the Strategic Plan for Research and Innovation in Health (PERIS) that granted this year by the Department of Health, Generalitat de Catalunya.

The main researcher of the project is Dr. Josep Vidal Alaball, family doctor at CAP Navàs and head of the Research and Innovation Area of ​​the Catalan Institute of Health (ICS) in Central Catalonia, and the co-Principal Investigator is Prof. Dr. Maria A. Barceló, PhD in Statistics and Principal Investigator of the project 'Socioeconomic and environmental inequalities in health and COVID-19'. The rest of the researchers come from the IDIAP Jordi Gol, the ICS Central Catalonia, the University of Winconsin-Madison, the Center for Research in Health and Economics (CRES), University Pompeu Fabra and the University of Girona.

The project, which was the second best rated, aims to analyze the impact of the pandemic on the health of the population of Catalonia. The effects of the pandemic on chronic diseases will be investigated, it will be analyzed whether the health of women has been particularly affected by COVID-19 and what role telemedicine has played (eConsulta, telephone assistance, Mi Salud, etc.), among others. Vidal says that “we hope to be able to draw conclusions about which are the people and diseases that, directly and indirectly, have suffered the most from the health disaster caused by COVID-19. We will strive to make these reflections as useful as possible for planning post-pandemic health in Catalonia”.