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!