EVENTS

Here you may find information regarding the events that the 29th ASPHER Annual Conference in Valencia is comprised of.

The ASPHER General Assembly

As in previous years, the ASPHER General Assembly will take place during the conference. This activity is scheduled for Friday 26 October 2007, and will be held in the EVES (Valencian School for Health Studies) premises.Information in relation to the Assembly agenda and other practical details will be communicated to the representatives of the Schools.

The Conference

In relation to the European Health Ministerial Conference which will take place in 2008, we consider that this is an excellent opportunity to analyze the Public Health services and functions in the European region, as well as the educational needs associated with them.

The challenge that not only originates from integrating Public Health services into European health systems, but also from the need to define the minimum set of the usual Public Health functions, prompts us to propose the following subject for the 29th ASPHER Annual Conference in Valencia:

“Strengthening Public Health Services in Europe. Public Health Functions and Educational Needs”

In the light of this main subject, we hope to be able to create a time to exchange initiatives and successful practices in relation to the three essential fields of action in Public Health: Health protection, Disease prevention and Health promotion.

We consider that revising our day-to-day experiences is the best basis to define the  essential dimensions, services and education needs in each of the three aforementioned fields, and in short, in Public Health services in the European region.

The conference allows us to learn about the initiatives taken in different countries, to know the policies and successful practices and to go deep into the various aspects, always with the purpose of improving the education and task performance of the Public Health professionals.

Analysing these areas will be the starting point of a debate and a review of the present-day scenario of the integration of Public Health into the heart of Health Systems, and of the future strategies to take on this challenge.

In order to meet the objectives proposed, we have laid out the following conference outline.

To cover the analysis of the experiences in each of the Public Health fields, we propose to deal with each one as an individual subject in such a way that each one has an associated plenary presentation session given by those in charge of such sessions within the Scientific Committee. These will in turn be followed by parallel sessions where moderated oral communications, thematic workshops and poster sessions will take place.

These sessions for each subject have been scheduled for Saturday 27 October.

After these sessions, and still within the integration into health systems framework, we have prepared a presentation session scheduled for Sunday 28 October under the heading: “Health systems and functional framework (stewardship, resource generation, financing and provision of services) and the role of Public Health: essential dimensions and training needs”.

We hope that you find this project we present here appealing, that it motivates you to share your experiences with us and that it is, in short, a useful tool to improve Public Health education in the European region.

Students Forum

Following the initiative of the Students Forum which has been organized in parallel with the most recent conference events, in the light of the agreements reached in the 28th ASPHER conference held in Maastricht, the topic proposed by the organization in Valencia is:

“Mobility of students in the European region: challenges and opportunities in the light of the European Higher Education Area”