ASPHER European Conference on Public Health, 5-8 November 2008, Lisbon

30th ASPHER Annual Conference.

In early November 2008, ASPHER , in collaboration with EUPHA, held its annual conference in Lisbon, Portugal. The high profile event attracted notable interest from the health community and was generally accepted as a great success, with participations numbers significantly up on previous years.

The conference, with the theme "innovation and moderisation of education in research in public health" was also one of many firsts. For the first time EUPHA played a collaborative role in the event’s organisation and significant funding was received from DG Sanco, via the new conference grants application for 2008.

One of the great successes of the event was seen by the strengthening of ties amongst important organisations in the public health sector. Most notably, a formal meeting between ASPHER, EPHA and EUPHA has led to the exciting possibility of strengthened collaboration between the organisations in a number of areas.

Conference content The aim of the Conference was to provide an opportunity for an exchange of ideas and experiences on health and innovation in Europe from the viewpoint of education and training.

The following questions were addressed during the plenary session:

 What is the impact of innovation on the future of public health, training and education?

 What kind of public health topics will need further research in the future?

 Do we have the competences within the universities to execute this research?

 Are there new ways to proceed with research?

Some common problems were also addressed, such as how stakeholders can work together outside their own setting, and how to better make the link between research and evidence-based policy.

A post-conference website will be coming shortly detailing abstracts, presentations and an evaluation report of the conference. EPHA will publish this online when it becomes available.

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ASPHER EUPHA