The Participatory Epidemiology Network for Animal and Public Health (PENAPH) is a partnership of organizations and individuals that seek to facilitate the continued development and application of participatory methods in epidemiology. PENAPH partners include animal health and public health organizations committed to one health and ecohealth approaches. The overall goal of PENAPH is to enhance epidemiological services in the developing world by making them more representative of and responsive to the needs of beneficiaries.

PENAPH membership is global. During the first three years of operation, PENAPH has contributed to the development of expertise throughout the world and has had requests from Africa, Asia and South America to contribute to the development of local networks and organizations that seek to sustain participatory approaches to epidemiology within the professional communities in their region. Recognizing the importance of local initiative, PENAPH has taken action to meet this grass-roots demand.

The PENAPH – Empowering National and Regional Stakeholders Project, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, provides financing to support up to three national or regional groups to undertake activities and solidify their organization.

Objective: To provide opportunities for national or regional groups to self-organize to carry out participatory epidemiology activities

Funding: Up to 3 applications will be funded. Maximum total budget per activity is 11,000 USD. Three thousand USD is available to support mentor involvement from one of the partner organizations. Co-funding of group activities from other on-going projects is encouraged.

Description: The proposals under this call should include activities that directly contribute to the self-organization of local partner groups that are eligible to become members of PENAPH. These activities can include group studies and/or workshops. One of the outputs must be a brief charter that describes the objective, membership and operating principals of the local partner. Existing organizations such as Universities, non-governmental organizations and regional organizations can propose to host the activity provided that a collaborative network approach is employed. The local organization can be informal (not a legal entity), however the financing arrangement will require either named individuals, or legal defined organization (such as a University) to take financial responsibility.

A mentor is defined as an experienced Participatory Epidemiology (PE) trainer from one of the PENAPH partner organizations who has overseen practical PE activities in the past. The role of the mentor is to provide guidance on proposal development, formation of the organization as well as design, implementation and analysis of any studies proposed. A separate fund is available to support developing country participation in the PENAPH Conference, so this does not have to be budgeted.

Examples of activities include:

  • Inception workshops for a local organization
  • Group PE studies that include formation of a local organization
  • Working meetings to define curricula, develop proposals, etc.

Other activities or any combination of the above is possible.

Application Requirements:

  • A local group and mentor team (Brief description of local group and mentor CV)
  • A brief description of the candidates training in PE including the organization that implemented the training, the length of the training, key topics covered and the amount of practical field work including in the training
  • The mentor comes from a partner organization and has demonstrated expertise in PE and group facilitation
  • A two-page concept note detailing objective, relevance to development context, a summary description of the organization to be formed, the activity proposed, methodology and outputs
  • A brief budget covering all costs requested from the project

Required outputs:

  • Brief report for presentation at the PENAPH Technical Workshop planned for December 2012
  • Brief organizational charter describing objectives, membership and operating principals
  • Report of workshop and or study activities

Review Criteria:

Required

  • Previous completion of a full PE introductory training workshop by participants.
  • A mentor from a PENAPH partner organization

Primary evaluation criteria:

  • Qualifications of Trainee/Mentor Team
  • Quality of proposal
  • Relevance of study topic to development context
  • Feasibility
  • Level of mentor support

Desirable:

  • Value added to other PENAPH activities
  • Additional outputs proposed

Application Submission and Deadline:

Applications should be submitted to PENAPH through Jeff Mariner no later than February 24th, 2012. Submission should be made by E-mail to j.mariner@cgiar.org and include; PENAPH National and Regional Organization Application in the subject line. Receipt will be confirmed. Decisions will be communicated within one month of closure of the application period.

You can read more about PENAPH and see announcements at www.penaph.net. To assure prompt notification of regarding calls for proposals and workshop developments, PENAPH suggests those interested visit the website and follow the link ‘Join our online community’ to join PENAPH.

The Participatory Epidemiology Network for Animal and Public Health (PENAPH) is a partnership of organizations and individuals that seek to facilitate the continued development and application of participatory methods in epidemiology. PENAPH partners include animal health and public health organizations committed to one health and ecohealth approaches. The overall goal of PENAPH is to enhance epidemiological services in the developing world by making them more representative of and responsive to the needs of beneficiaries.

PENAPH is pleased to announce that it will hold a technical workshop to bring together trainers, practitioners and others interested in Participatory Epidemiology (PE) and its applications in animal health, one health and ecohealth. The organization of the workshop is supported by a grant to ILRI from the Rockefeller Foundation through the Empowering National and Regional Stakeholders Grant. ILRI hosts the PENAPH secretariat. The Technical Workshop will produce an electronic proceedings that contains the papers presented and results of discussion forums.

Communications concerning the Technical Workshop will be posted on www.penaph.net and broadcast by E-mail to PENEPH members. To assure prompt notification of workshop developments, the Workshop Committee suggests those interested visit the website and follow the link ‘Join our online community’ to join PENAPH.

The objectives of the Technical Workshop are to:

  • Document and exchange experiences in PE
  • Report results of mentored field studies from PE training programs
  • Report regional and national partner activities
  • Document workshop proceedings and papers in an electronic publication
  • Plan the future of the network

Program activities

  • Presentation of papers
  • Discussion forums
  • Poster session
  • Social events

Call for papers:

A call for papers will be initiated in the near future and submission reviewed. Applications involving animal health, public health and one health will be of interest. It is envisaged that session themes will include, but not be limited to:

  • Project and program experiences involving PE
  • Research on PE methods
  • Epidemiological research involving PE methods
  • Methods for assessments and evaluations of programs that include PE
  • Participatory impact assessment of health related activities

Discussion forums:

It is planned that these will be facilitated discussion focused on questions put forward by the PENAPH community. As part of the conference registration process, registrants will have the opportunity to suggest discussion questions.

Funding:

The core organization of the workshop and a limited number of stipends for participants from developing countries are funded through the project. The Empowering National and Regional Stakeholders Project has limited funds to support participants from developing countries. Participants from developing countries who have a paper or poster accepted and do not have an on-going sponsoring project for their work will be given priority.

Projects active in the area of PE are encouraged to support participants to the workshop as an opportunity to share their findings. Information on projected costs for self-funded participants will be made available in the second announcement.

Target Date:

Three days in early December 2012

Venue:

A developing country location – suggestions welcome through the PENAPH website and blog. Submit your suggestion as a COMMENT on this blogpost.

 

Background: PENAPH has had two core partners meetings where the formation and operating principles of the network has been the main topic. PENAPH has conducted training of trainers workshops in English and in French, conducted pilot training programs on the use of PE in one health and hosts a website on participatory epidemiology (www.penaph.net).  Those interested are encouraged to visit the website to learn more. At present, 13 organizations and 225 individuals are members of PENAPH.

This PENAPH Technical Workshop is intended as a next step to bring together all core and organizational partners as well as interested individuals.

Under the Empowering National and Regional Stakeholder Project, funding is also available to support 5 mentored field studies to assist practitioner trainees to complete their practical experience requirements. The call for applications for Mentored PE Studies support is being announced at www.penaph.net and the trainees will be required to submit the results of their studies as a paper for presentation to the Technical Workshop.

Please share the information with interested colleagues and watch the PENAPH site for more news and announcements!

The Participatory Epidemiology Network for Animal and Public Health (PENAPH) is a partnership of organizations and individuals that seek to facilitate the continued development and application of participatory methods in epidemiology. The overall goal of PENAPH is to enhance epidemiological services in the developing world by making them more representative of and responsive to the needs of beneficiaries.

PENAPH seeks to encourage high standards of training and practice in participatory epidemiology (PE) and provides certification for practitioners as a means of encouraging good training practice. The PENPH training process recognizes the importance of practical experience.

There are three requirements for PENAPH certification as a PE Practitioner. These are:

  • Completed a 10-day PE Introductory Training Workshop that includes practical field exercise
  • Completed a short field study, usually of one-months duration, and provided a report of results
  • Participated in a three day refresher training to share results and experiences

For some trainees who have completed an introductory workshop, resources have not always been available to complete the field studies portion of the training program. The PENAPH – Empowering National and Regional Stakeholders Project, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, provides financing for a mentored field study activity that seeks to facilitate trainees to complete their practical field experience requirements.

Objective: To provide opportunities for individuals who have completed an introductory training workshop in PE practice to obtain the practical experience required to complete the requirements for PENAPH PE practitioner certification.

Funding: Up to 5 applications will be funded. Maximum total budget from project 6,000 USD per mentored study. Co-funding from other on-going projects encouraged.

Description:

This project activity will support up to five individuals to complete short mentored field studies. The study topics should be relevant to development challenges and ideally will contribute to assist complimentary programs to reach their objectives. An important secondary objective is to help PENAPH partners strengthen their networks with local partners. It is envisaged that the studies will require 1 to 2 months of field work which should be completed within 4 months of receipt of the award.

Studies that indirectly contribute or add value to efforts for the formation of local PE organizations will be encouraged. One required output is the submission of a paper for the PENAPH conference planned for December 2012. The paper will be reviewed by the Workshop Technical Committee and may be either accepted as an oral publication, as a poster, or rejected. Submission is required by September 15th, 2012. In the case of rejected papers that were submitted on time, the study team would have an opportunity to respond to comments and resubmit. Publications for peer-reviewed journals are also encouraged. Presentation and participation in the Technical Workshop will be considered equivalent to participation in a refresher trainee and the trainee will receive a PENAPH Practitioner certificate at the closing of the technical workshop.

The funding available is envisaged to cover mentor and trainee field travel costs (transport and expenses) and materials. An advance payment will be made to enable the field work and a final payment will be made based upon the completion of reporting requirements. This information will be detailed in a consulting agreement between ILRI and the awardees signed at the time of award of the funding

A mentor is defined as an experienced PE trainer from one of the PENAPH partner organizations who has overseen practical PE study assignments in the past. The mentor’s role in the field studies will be to guide the trainee in the development, implementation and analysis of the study. A separate fund is available to support developing country participation in the PENAPH Conference, so this does not have to be budgeted.

Applications will be reviewed by a committee of representatives from at least three PENAPH partner organizations.

Application Requirements:

  • A trainee and mentor team (CVs attached)
  • A brief description of the candidates training in PE including the organization that implemented the training, the length of the training, key topics covered and the amount of practical field work including in the training
  • The mentor comes from a PENAPH partner organization and has demonstrated expertise in PE
  • A two-page concept note detailing objective, relevance to development context, study site and stakeholder groups, methodology, timeframe and expected outputs.
  • A brief budget covering all costs requested from the project

Required Outputs:

  • A publication quality paper submitted for presentation at the PENAPH Technical Workshop planned for December 2012. The paper will be reviewed for quality by the technical program committee of the Technical Workshop. The final payment will be made on the basis of the acceptance of the paper as either a oral presentation or poster.

Review Criteria:

Required

  • Previous completion of a full PE introductory training workshop.
  • A mentor from a PENAPH partner organization

Primary evaluation criteria:

  • Qualifications of Trainee/Mentor Team
  • Quality of proposal
  • Relevance of study topic to development context
  • Feasibility
  • Level of mentor support

Desirable:

  • Value added to other PENAPH activities
  • Additional outputs proposed

Application Submission and Deadline:

Applications should be submitted to Jeff Mariner no later than February 17th, 2012. Submission should be made by E-mail to j.mariner@cgiar.org and include; PENAPH Mentored Field Study Application in the subject line. Receipt will be confirmed.

Good news! PENAPH has received renewed funding from the Rockefeller Foundation under the title Empowering National and Regional Stakeholders. The grant has three main components. The first is modest allocations to support individuals to complete mentored PE studies as part of the training process to obtain certification as a PE partitioners. The second is small grants to national or regional groups of PE practitioners to form local PE network organizations and carry out inception activities. The third component is funding for a PENAPH Technical Workshop for presentation of experiences and planning future initiatives. Detailed announcements and calls for applications for the project activities will be posted on the PENAPH website after the New Year.

PENAPH will facilitate a four day introductory course to Participatory Epidemiology at the Summer Public Health Institute (PHI) at the University of Minnesota. The PHI offers opportunities for students to take classes in Culturally Responsive Public Health, Environmental Science, Food Protection, Global Health, Infectious Disease Epi, Public Health Leadership, Public Health Preparedness, Response & Recovery, Research Methods & Women and Child Health.  This year Christine Jost will be lead facilitator of the PE course using materials developed by PENAPH partners.  The course will run from May 31 to June 3, 2011. Financial aid is available for some students.  Go to http://www.sph.umn.edu/ce/institute/ to learn more.

The 9 PENAPH partners have prepared a discussion paper on institutional approaches to surveillance systems that  has been selected for presentation at the International Conference on Animal Health Surveillance to be held in Lyon France on May 2011. The following is an introduction to the paper.

Globally, it is recognized that effective health surveillance plays a critical role that requires ongoing reinforcement in helping to assure the well-being of the earth and its living populations. . This recognition is taking place within a context of a renewed call for more effective and comprehensive integration of health efforts under headings such as ’One Health’ or ‘Ecohealth’, which assume inclusion of human, animal, and ecosystem health.

Health surveillance is a complex activity that brings together a broad range of actors and organizations whose interactions are governed by sets of formal and informal rules. Achieving effective health surveillance has been challenging within the context of conventional health science institutions. This has resulted in part from approaches in the past that have emphasized technical issues over the reality of how people are motivated to work together and share information. The current excitement about One Health approaches stems in part from the added value that integrated institutions can bring to activities such as health surveillance. However, the One Health approach also brings new challenges and transaction costs. In order to succeed in enhancing surveillance and capturing the added value of One Health approaches, it is important that these challenges, incentives and disincentives are explicitly recognized. 

The Participatory Epidemiology Network for Animal and Public Health (PENAPH) advocates for an institutional approach to capacity building that starts from an assessment of institutions and institutional objectives. In the social sciences, an “institution” is defined as a combination of actors and the mechanisms through which they interact to achieve a common purpose.  The authors wish to suggest that the inclusion of an institutional analysis framework into evaluations of surveillance systems can provide new insights into surveillance performance, optimization and sustainability. By explicitly including elements of attitudes, expectations, customary practice, and values a better understanding of why information is or is not moving can be achieved.  We believe institutional analysis is an essential tool for leaders in health surveillance institutional change. In this paper we present an example of an institutional framework for designing surveillance systems, formulating and targeting capacity building activities, and evaluating success.

This week, Syed Noman Ali provides an update on some work by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and others to  introduce participatory epidemiology to strengthen animal disease surveillance and control of Zoonotic diseases including highly pathogenic avian influenza in Armenia.

Read the blogpost

During the first week of October a multidisciplinary team formed of public, animal and environmental health professionals joined forces in Western Kenya. The 6 PE practitioners were recruited following the advertisement posted on the PENAPH virtual community of practice in August 2010. The remaining team members are staff from the US Centres for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) based in Kenya and the Kenyan Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) and from ILRI. The objectives of the pilot study are as follows:

  • Determine the perceived causes of childhood diarrhea and the perceived relative contribution of enteric zoonoses in childhood morbidity and mortality using participatory epidemiology.
  • Compare and contrast the results of the participatory epidemiological study with those of the ongoing CDC/KEMRI case-control studies. For more information on the already ongoing CDC/KEMRI project see: GEMS-ZED

The activities are divided in 3 phases:

  • 4-8 October: Refresher course & 2 day field work: Establish an understanding of community perceptions of childhood diarrhea, the major causes, treatments, prevention methods and impacts.
  • 1-2 November: phase 2 (2 day field work): Share with community members the info on lab data compared and contrasted with information from the community à interpret both sets of data in participatory manner and collectively find prevention/treatment/education methods/risk factors of importance.
  • 6-9 December: phase 3 (2 day field work & 2 day write up): Reinforce importance of prevention and education about risk factors. Determine if the community continues to share beliefs previously discussed.

Collaboration between the Participatory Epidemiology Network for Animal and Public Health (PENAPH) and the Chiang Mai University’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Chiang Mai, Thailand regarding participatory epidemiology (PE) has taken place since 2009.

After a short briefing course on PE in March 2010 by Dr Jeff Mariner from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the Veterinary Public Health Centre for Asia Pacific (VPHCAP) decided to include a full 10-day course on PE as part of the short training course on Surveillance, Emergency Preparedness and Response from 12 July to 6 August 2010.

Two ILRI facilitators provided the course for a total of 24 participants from 13 different Asian countries (Bhutan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Viet Nam). Nine of the participants are students of the Masters in Veterinary Public Health at the above-mentioned centre.

The participants were very receptive to PE approaches and many mentioned that they would be applying them in their day-to-day work. As part of the training course, five field practices were organized (two on dairy cattle, two on poultry and one on pigs) so that all participants had the opportunity to practise an interview while in Chiang Mai. The course was successfully completed and we hope that this is a first step to more PENAPH work in Asia in the future.

A first introductory course in participatory epidemiology (PE) was organized by the Participatory Epidemiology Network for Animal and Public Health (PENAPH) and the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET) between 15 and 25 March 2010 in Arua, Uganda. The nineteen participants were second year students from the Ugandan Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Program (FELTP) and teaching staff from the School of Public Health, Makerere University.

The objectives of the course were as follows:

  1. To introduce the general principles of PE as well as specific tools;
  2. To promote community participation as part of field epidemiology;
  3. To promote the use of participatory disease surveillance as a component of comprehensive disease surveillance programs;
  4. To develop course materials that will serve as a reference handbook for trainees;
  5. To contribute to the sustainability of the AFENET – PENAPH collaboration by serving as an important public good outcome.

Two documents will result from the training materials developed: a training manual for trainers in PE and a module for the participants to have as a reference document. Once ready, the documents will be published online and shared with PE practitioners and trainers worldwide through the PENAPH community of practice.

As a follow up to the introductory course, the participants will conduct field work in small teams on a topic of their interest. A refresher course is scheduled for August 2010, during which the participants will present the findings of their field work and we will review some of the topics addressed during the introductory course.

 

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