Celebrating 15 years of EUPHEM
The European Public Health Microbiology Programme (EUPHEM) is celebrating 15 years of providing state-of-the-art training in public health microbiology and enabling its fellows to apply microbiological and epidemiological methods to a wide range of public health problems in Europe.
The European Public Health Microbiology Programme (EUPHEM) is celebrating 15 years of providing state-of-the-art training in public health microbiology and enabling its fellows to apply microbiological and epidemiological methods to a wide range of public health problems in Europe.
Launched in 2008, the two-year postgraduate fellowship programme in public health microbiology complements the European Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training (EPIET), the first and second EUPHEM cohorts comprised just two fellows each. Since then, EUPHEM has produced 94 graduates with the fifteenth cohort, placed in 2023, consisting of 11 fellows. EUPHEM training sites have been instrumental to the success of the programme, with more than 20 participating sites over the last 15 years.
EUPHEM fellows actively contribute to improving public health in the EU/EEA. They were instrumental to COVID-19 pandemic response activities in many countries and often undertake interdisciplinary field assignments with a ‘One Health’ approach, collaborating with animal health or environmental health counterparts. Key specialised competencies acquired during the programme include bioinformatics, biosecurity and biosafety, molecular epidemiology, diagnostics and typing methods, and emerging disease diagnostics.
EUPHEM has always had a clear focus on the development of leadership, management and communication competencies. It has also supported related initiatives, like the Global Laboratory Leadership Programme, with a One-Health approach to learning programmes and a multi-stakeholder partnership among the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC), the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH).
In December 2010, ECDC assumed full responsibility for EUPHEM and in 2016 it became part of the ECDC Fellowship Programme alongside the EPIET programme.
Individual work summaries that provide an overview of the projects, trainings and competencies of EUPHEM fellows are published on the ECDC website.
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