To: National Focal Point for Public Health Training – Members
CC: National Focal Point for Public Health Training –Alternates
CC: National Coordinators of ECDC Coordinating Competent Bodies – Members and Alternates
Dear Estonia Generic Email Box -,
ECDC will organise Summer School, on 22/05/2024 - 24/05/2024, in Stockholm, Sweden.
This email is sent only for information purposes about the upcoming training activity.
No action is required at this stage from your side.
National Focal Point for Public Health Training – Members will shortly receive an individual email from ECDCEventNominations-noreply with the link to nominate participant(s) from each country (one participant and one alternate).
Please find below more specific information about the training.
Overall Aim:
The overall aim of the course is to introduce the usage of mathematical modelling and strategic foresight for assessing and anticipating threats in public health.
Scope & Purpose:
For the mathematical modelling session, the objective is to provide public health practitioners that are not modellers with the essentials to understand the key concepts of modelling, the types of questions modelling can help decision makers with, general limitations of models (data, uncertainties, assumptions, etc.), and how to interpret, and clearly communicate in a non-scientific way modelling results from publications/reports.
Participants will learn key components and modelling concepts of infectious disease transmission and control, analyse an ECDC modelling output to interpret its modelling findings, and discuss how modelling informs policy making.
Concerning the strategic foresight session, the objective is to allow participants to understand the basic concepts of strategic foresight, understand its relevance for public health, and to explore how public health practitioners can make use of it in their work. The session is not aimed at conducting foresight studies or training foresight experts, but at building capacity in foresight and future thinking in a practical way, so that participants can independently apply elements of it in their decision making and daily work.
Both modelling and foresight provide valuable tools for assessing and anticipating threats in public health and help public health decision making under uncertainty.
Target Audience:
This Summer School has been designed for public health practitioners interested in understanding, interpreting and utilising results and outputs of anticipatory approaches, both quantitative and qualitative, to guide public health decision making.
The training is most useful for public health decision makers involved in planning of interventions and resource allocation, who interact with modelling outcomes and may benefit from understanding different approaches to what may come. Both specialists and generalists can benefit from this Summer School.
Note that this training is not aimed for modellers or foresight experts, and it does not aim to train modellers or foresight experts. Furthermore, by attending this course participants commit, as one step towards strengthening the capacity of countries, to cascade the knowledge gained during the course in their professional setting.
