Training

Coordination of training programmes and support to Member States, the European Commission, and key stakeholders in public health is at the core of ECDC’s mandate. In 2022, the Centre consolidated its offer of continuous professional development activities and continued to implement the Fellowship Programme (EPIET/EUPHEM). It also continued to manage the Mediterranean and Black Sea Programme in Intervention Epidemiology Training (MediPIET), running two cohorts in parallel.

The publication of the updated ‘Core competencies in applied infectious disease epidemiology’, and its translation into all EU/EEA languages, together with the self-assessment tool available through the ECDC Virtual Academy (EVA), is an important resource for professionals in the countries and for ECDC staff.

The ECDC Virtual Academy is the platform hosting training activities and materials of ECDC training programmes, covering online courses available in open access, and courses and webinars for restricted audiences, through the Continuous Professional Development training portfolio.

In 2022, 24 fellows graduated from the ECDC Fellowship Programme and the EPIET-Associated Programmes (EAPs) (20 EPIET/EUPHEM from cohort 2020, three EAPs from cohort 2020 and one EAP from cohort 2019). At year’s end, 73 fellows were enrolled (36 from cohort 2021 and 37 from cohort 2022).

The programmes are only possible thanks to the partnerships with public health institutes and laboratories located in EU/EEA countries, where fellows are employed as fully-fledged professionals, learning through service, to conduct surveillance, response and applied research in field epidemiology and public health microbiology. To strengthen and ensure the quality of training, several training site visits were carried out The programme delivers an introductory course and several other training modules to the fellows in collaboration with facilitators from the rich network of supervisors and alumni, and several fellows have also been able to participate in optional international assignments. Most of the training modules in the ECDC Fellowship Programme were delivered jointly with MediPIET.