Download the ASPHER December 2021 Newsletter here.

What a year it has been! Who would have thought we would still be in the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic? The ASPHER COVID-19 Task Force has been meeting weekly and following the situation from the very beginning. Don’t miss the end of the year highlights from the group featured in this newsletter with guidance on pandemic waves and the need to Do-It-All in the face of Omicron and potential future variants.

Dr Michael J Ryan, Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme has been a leader in the struggle over the past two years to contain Covid-19 and we are honoured to announce that Dr Ryan is the 2021 recipient of ASPHER’s Andrija Stampar Medal. He has demonstrated excellence in his current and previous efforts as he acts to ‘be coordinated, be coherent, go after the virus… be fast, have no regrets.’

ASPHER was also busy on many other fronts as outlined in the president’s message. This includes close work with ECDC, with the Updating Core Competencies in Applied Infectious Disease Epidemiology (UCCAIDE) and VXTRAIN projects. We are happy to report that UCCAIDE is now recently completed – we will bring you relevant news in early 2022 when materials are made available. Meanwhile, VXTRAIN is entering a crucial period with background deliverables wrapped up and work starting on vaccine acceptance communication curricula. While mentioning ECDC, don’t miss the ECDC call for seconded national experts.

The Erasmus+ Capacity Building project, Sharing European Educational Experience for Israel (SEEEPHI) is approaching the end of year one in perfect step and synergy with the WHO-ASPHER Road Map for Public Health Workforce Professionalisation due to be published in early 2022. We are looking forward to rolling out the Road Map in several country-level actions and programmes with our members and partners; while SEEEPHI serves as a great example of how to enable the relevant agenda with EU-funding support. We are determined to build effective partnerships at individual country levels in these efforts.

We will have exciting news on collaborative and partnership efforts to announce to you very soon when we are able to reveal the ASPHER work plan for 2022 advancing on the ASPHER 2025 agenda – pending final consideration by the ASPHER Executive Board in January. ASPHER also followed the IANPHI and EPHA AGA meetings earlier this month and engaged with EUPHA and WHO EURO on 2022 planning.

The primary element that remains critical for all of the Association’s work is our active and committed membership – we are very lucky and proud to have all of you making ASPHER strong. The presidency agenda over the past two years has proved a worthy effort to improve members’ connectivity and engagement, and we are striving for more. We would be delighted to hear from all of you with your individual perspective. We have already learned a lot from those of you who have answered the Membership survey. If you haven’t yet responded, we hope you will find some time during the holiday break for one final chance to respond and share your programme’s story – please do!

We are excited to enter 2022 with a vigorous and growing member network with new applications coming up. We hope that conditions will allow us to see many of you next year… let’s see. For now, we encourage you to read Lore’s reporting from her mission to Fulda University of Applied Sciences for their International Days. Meeting in person is a pretty rare experience these days, so don’t miss it.

Following up on all of the above, we continue to work to enhance ASPHER infrastructure to serve members better. In the upcoming year, we aim to improve the Association’s online presence and have a greater impact in the digital public health community. In this regard, the Secretariat is encouraging all members to set up social media accounts and send us relevant details so we may link up with you and amplify your communications. We also encourage members to take advantage of the ASPHER blog if you have any items or reporting from your country or institution that you wish to share in more detail.

Be sure to catch all the Association, Member and Partner news and opportunities in this issue! 

We hope that you will have the opportunity for quality time off in the coming days, please enjoy! All our best for a great 2022!

ASPHER Secretariat

Download the ASPHER December 2021 Newsletter here.