ASPHER Secretariat, joined by ASPHER President Carlo Signorelli and ASPHER Executive Board Member Mary Codd, ASPHER Fellow Karl Conyard and Milan University Vita Salute San Raffaele Resident Flavia Pennisi, is dispatching our January-February 2023 newsletter to you from University College Dublin, Ireland where we are holding a site visit ahead of the 2023 Deans’ & Directors’ Retreat. The Retreat promises to be a great event, so mark your calendars for 31 August - 03 September!

We apologise that this newsletter arrives with slight delay, but you can see from this large volume that it has been a very full start to the New Year with much ASPHER activity, as well as Member and Partner news and opportunities. 

First and foremost, as we approach the upcoming ASPHER General Assembly in Rome on 03 May in the context of the World Congress on Public Health, we wish to draw your attention to important ASPHER Calls for candidates to stand for ASPHER Presidential election, ASPHER Executive Board election, and to host the next ASPHER Deans’ & Directors’ Retreat. We are also calling for your nominations for ASPHER awards including: the Andrija Stampar Medalist; Research Excellence Award; Teaching & Practice Excellence Award; and Early Career Excellence Awards.

ASPHER continues work on key agenda areas with vice-President John Middleton and former President Kasia Czabanowska attending the second steering committee meeting of the WHO Roadmap to Professionalizing the Public Health and Emergency Workforce globally. We are pleased to announce new partnerships for our climate agenda, and we are continuing actions from our task forces, and updates and publications from ongoing and recent projects. ASPHER office has a great group of new interns to assist and enrich the Association work in the coming months. We also have continuing input and support from our ASPHER Fellows and are calling for a new Fellow on Inequalities – if you know someone who could be interested let us know!

We must recognize that the year has not started out as an easy one for many in the European Region and the ASPHER Task Force on War has reflected extensively about one year of war in Ukraine. We also bring you news from Israel which is seeing the future of public health under threat in the country due to a constitutional crisis and plans to abolish judicial review of government decisions. ASPHER office has also been.in touch with Koç University, our member in Turkey after the terrible earthquake and many aftershocks. We expect to say more about that situation in our next newsletter, but for now we recommend to you the acaps report profiling earthquake-affected areas in Turkey and Syria. 

As always, please stay in touch if you are interested in any of the ASPHER calls, task forces or other activities and let Lore know at lore.leighton@aspher.org about what you and your programme is up to so it can be included in the next newsletter! 

Please don’t forget to share your news, publications, comments & suggestions with Lore at lore.leighton@aspher.org to be included in the next regular issue of the newsletter and on the ASPHER website activity log.

Download the Newsletter here!