ECDC’s workshop on public health capacities at the 14th European Health Forum Gastein

News

5 October 2011

Strengthening public health capacities in a diverse European setting has become a major issue in an enlarged European Union. Migration within the Member States and incoming migrants from neighbouring countries is influencing national and regional public health policies. The importance of strengthening and building up new public health capacities in a time of increased migration is going to be discussed at the workshop organised by the ECDC at the 14th European Health Forum Gastein (EHFG).

The speakers of the workshop will be Director of ECDC Dr Marc Sprenger, Professor Helmut Brand (Maastricht University), Dr Ludovica Banfi (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights), Professor Karl Ekdahl (ECDC), and panellists Dr Josep Figueras (European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies) and Dr Dineke Zeegers Paget (European Public Health Association).

Professor Brand will present his ideas on the type of public health professionals that will be needed in the future to tackle these challenges in the Member States.
Professor Ekdahl will explain the role of ECDC in development of public health capacities in the area of communicable diseases.
Dr Banfi will present findings of a study on access to healthcare for irregular migrants in 10 Member States of the European Union.

The EHFG was founded in 1998 as a European health policy conference with the aim of providing a platform for discussion for the various stakeholders in the field of public health and health care. Since then the EHFG has developed into a key annual event, bringing together, politicians, senior decision-makers, representatives of interest groups, and experts coming from government and administration, business and industry, civil society and science and academia. This is a second consecutive year that ECDC takes part in the EHFG in a form of a lunch workshop. The topic of the workshop in 2010 was 'Communicating risk in a diverse world'.