ECDC Summer School 2016

The goal of the Summer School was to strengthen the mentoring and technical skills of both ECDC experts and experts within ECDC networks, such as supervisors of the Fellowship programme, by providing an opportunity for networking and scientific exchange.

The specific objectives of the Summer School were:

1. Address expressed training needs among EPIET/EUPHEM supervisors
2. Bring supervisors together to share and exchange experiences and views on supervision, coaching and creating collaborations between microbiologists and epidemiologists
3. Bring ECDC core activities and fellowship network closer, by increasing the ability for supervisors to identify projects that link to ECDC’s core and priority tasks, and facilitating opportunities for Member State and ECDC experts to be aware of and involved in fellowship projects
4. Incorporate the trainers of MediPIET into the training networks

The parallel workshops planned were:

 

1. Induction of new and future supervisors
2. Supervising a fellow: roles, responsibilities, expectations
3. The Fellowships are competency-based programmes
4. Scientific writing: The argument matrix and abstract writing
5. Scientific review: Surveillance projects and operational research

Technical workshops

1. From evidence to action in public health
2. Public Health Economics
3. Public health law perspective in communicable diseases
4. Anthropology, applied to communicable disease prevention and control
5. Health emergency preparedness
6. Hands on training on conducting rapid risk assessments and 
7. Phylogeny

Participants could choose to attend the train-train the trainer track, specially designed for supervisors, or parallel technical workshops. At the end of every day, there was a scientific seminar in topics of interest for all the different target audiences. New and future supervisors followed a pre-designed track aimed at induction of supervisors to the fellowship programmes. All other participants chose one workshop per day from the mosaic of available workshops.

The target audiences for the 2016 edition were:

• Supervisors of EPIET and EUPHEM: main supervisors, co-supervisors and also those that support fellows in specific projects (15 seats)
• Member State professionals working in prevention and control of communicable diseases (15 seats)
• ECDC experts (15 seats, or more depending on capacity of the class-room)
• MediPIET Supervisors (15 seats)
• Young Gasteiners (3 seats)

 

Selection of participants from Member States (EPIET/EUPHEM supervisors and other senior experts) were done through official invitation letters to the National Focal Points for Public Health Training, who were invited to propose the candidates from their respective Member States. The EPIET Training Site Forum and EUPHEM Training forum and the Coordinating Competent Bodies were informed.