The idea for this Summer School was conceived during an international workshop on “Evidence-Based Public Health: Concepts and Methods“, held at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich in November 2010. Following on from direct and indirect feedback from this workshop and through consultation with international colleagues working in public health and evidence synthesis, a distinct requirement for training in evidence-based public health was identified. In response to this, the European Summer School in Evidence-Based Public Health has evolved as a collaboration between the LMU Munich (Prof Eva Rehfuess) and the University of Liverpool (Prof Daniel Pope). Including eminent speakers in the field of Evidence-Based Public Health, the Summer School takes place on a regular basis in either Liverpool or Munich.

The fifth Summer School will take place in Munich from 20th to 24th July 2020. It will be hosted by the Pettenkofer School of Public Health.

The Summer School is ideal for:

• Researchers planning to undertake systematic reviews of public health interventions or working on other aspects of evidence- based public health;
• Researchers and professionals wishing to embrace and implement a complexity perspective in their public health activities;
• Mid-career professionals working in public health institutions; and
• Students undertaking a Master or PhD in Public Health or Epidemiology and wishing to embark on a career in evidence-based public health.

Learning objectives and methods

The European Summer School in Evidence-Based Public Health has the following objectives:

• To learn about the principles of the evolving field of evidence-based public health through the use of worked examples.
• To embrace concepts of “complex interventions” and “complex systems” and to understand how these concepts affect evalution of public health interventions in primary research and evidence synthesis.
• To understand the process, conduct and use of systematic reviews in public health, focusing on quantitative reviews but being mindful of qualitative/mixed-method reviews as well as other review formats (e.g. scoping reviews, overviews of systematic reviews).
• To get to know the GRADE approach as a means of assessing the quality of a body of evidence.
• To appreciate challenges of and different approaches to translating evidence into policy and practice.

The Summer School includes:

• Keynote presentations from European experts in the field of evidence-based public health, followed by group discussions.
• Instruction in the conduct of systematic reviews and meta-analysis using examples that cover a variety of public health areas.
• Small group exercises and practice sessions in conceptualisation and evaluation of complex interventions, literature searches, critical appraisal of published studies, meta-analysis and the application of the GRADE approach. 

Important dates