ECDC Lighthouse
ECDC Lighthouse is a Community of Practice to strengthen the role of social sciences in infectious disease prevention.
The ECDC Lighthouse is a Community of Practice focused on infectious disease prevention and behaviour. It connects professionals who use social and behavioural sciences in their public health work. The community offers an online collaboration platform, providing learning opportunities in form of online trainings, expert-led sessions and peer discussions.
One of the early initiatives of the Community is a webinar series that cover topics such as health literacy, trust, and vaccination acceptance and uptake.
The ECDC Lighthouse aims to bridge knowledge gaps, support the translation of research to implementation, and strengthen EU/EEA’s public health responses through embedding social and behavioural sciences into policy and practice.
Who can join?
Participation in the Community is based on interest from individual experts, and as such it represents an informal forum rather than a network based on official nominations from the public authorities in the EU/EEA countries. The ECDC Lighthouse welcomes people who are interested, experienced, or currently involved in the prevention of infectious diseases through use of social and behavioural sciences, and who work for or are affiliated with organisations and institutions in the EU/EEA.
These could include, among others:
- public health authorities
- universities and research institutions
- civil society and community-based organisations
Exceptions apply to individuals that have commercial interests in the field of ECDC’s mandate.
Why create a Community of Practice: background and context
In 2020/21, ECDC conducted a survey across EU/EEA to assess the status of social and behavioural research and its translation to effective strategies in support of the COVID-19 pandemic response. Key themes that emerged from the survey include:
- Significant gaps and geographical disparity in capacity across the EU;
- Greater reliance on quantitative rather than qualitative research due to limited capacities, time, resources and staff;
- Low awareness of potential added value of behavioural research;
- Funding was not prioritised.
These findings suggested a need for a system that would support social and behavioural research professionals, build capacity and expertise, and facilitate networking opportunities among professionals working in this area in the EU.
Additionally, following the ECDC extended mandate calling for a stronger role in infectious disease prevention, ECDC developed a framework for the prevention of infectious diseases. Within the new framework, social and behavioural sciences complement ECDC’s long-established prevention work that had been largely based on medical epidemiology and microbiology. A cornerstone of the Prevention Framework is the establishment of a Community of Practice on Prevention, aimed at gathering a critical mass of expertise in the prevention of infectious diseases.