PENAPH

First Technical Conference Participants:

The Conference is about to start. It promises to be a great week in Chiang Mai. This time of year is the nicest weather and an important Holiday period in Thailand.

If you are arriving by plane at the Chiang Mai Airport look for hotel staff with a sign for the Mae Ping Imperial Hotel to get the shuttle to the hotel. You are free on Sunday to explore the city. The Hotel is located not far from the Old City Center and the Night Bazaar. On the 10th, a representative of the organizing committee will be present in the lobby of the hotel to greet you and answer any questions from 17:00 to 18:30.

Conference registration starts on the morning of December 11th (Tuesday) in front of Imperial Hall 1 from 8 AM. The Conference Secretariat will be in Imperial 4.

Please note that most presentations have a time block of 20 minutes. Presenters should plan to speak for 15 minutes and leave 5 minutes for questions and change of speaker. Selected presentations marked on the program as innovative presentations have a 30-minute time block. Presenters should plan to speak for about 22 minutes and leave the reminder for discussion and change of speaker. Presentations should be brought to the Secretariat Room by 9 AM of the day of the presentation. The updated program can be downloaded from the conference page on this website

Poster stands will be available. There is no set format for the posters. The stands are 1.8 m in length by 2.4 m in width and normally accommodate 2 posters. You are reminded that font size should be sufficient for the poster to be easily read at a distance of 8 feet.

Looking forward to seeing everyone in Chiang Mai,

Jeffrey Mariner

PENAPH Coordinator

International Livestock Research Institute

Nairobi, Kenya

The PENAPH Technical Conference being held in Chiang Mai on Dec 11 to 13 will hold its conference dinner at Khum Khantoke. This is a elegant garden restaurant with traditional Thai dancing. The conference  dinner is included in the conference registration fee and also open to all those who have waiver of the fee or are supported by a stipend. So, everyone is invited! You can see some photos of the  restaurant venue at:

http://khantoke.com/#

Hope to see you there!

Workshop Registration, Payment of Conference Fees, Hotel Bookings and Visa Procedures

The PENAPH Technical Conference will share experiences in the application of PE, innovative papers describing new developments and host discussion forums on hot topics in participatory epidemiology.

Our registration, payment, hotel booking and visa process are now in place. 63 people have already registered. Please follow the instuctions below.

For those who reqested a stipend, they will receive an individual E-mail tomorrow giving the result.

Step 1: Registration for the workshop is now open at: http://peworkshop.eventbrite.com/ At the registration site, citizens of developing countries and/or full time students from anywhere in the world, can request a waiver of the conference fee. Those granted a waiver will receive a ‘discount code’ for Step 2 Payment of the conference fees within a few days of registering.

Step 2: Payment of conference fees is now open. The fee for those who do not have a stipend or waiver is 175 USD. For those with a stipend or waiver, you will receive a discount code, but still need to go to this site and ‘purchase’ your ticket with a 100% discount using your code. The conference fee will increase to 225 USD after November 22, 2012. Please make payment early to assist us in planning. The site for payment of conference fees is:  http://pepayment.eventbrite.com

Step 3: Hotel bookings at the Mae Ping Hotel are done by downloading the booking form and sending it to the hotel. We have reserved a block of rooms which will be held until October 30th. After that date, we can’t promise that there will be a room in the Mae Ping hotel. There probably will be rooms near by though. If you have not been awarded a stipend, you will need to reserve your room and pay for the first night to confirm the reservation. For those with a stipend, the organizing committee will reserve and guarantee your room. The form can be downloaded at  http://ilri-biotech.wikispaces.com/Events

Questions??? Send an E-mail to: Penaph-Registration@cgiar.org

Visa Procedures:

Participants from the US and Canada, most of Europe and South East Asia may enter Thailand without a visa. The countries requiring visas can be seen in a map of the world at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Thailand

Participants from AFRICA (other than South Africa and Ethiopia), Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal and Pakistan will need to obtain a VISA IN ADVANCE from the Thai Embassy designated for their COUNTRY OF RESIDENCE. This means that if you are resident outside your own country, you will need to apply to the Thai Embassy designated for the country where you are resident.

The conference organizers can provide guidance and documents to help you get a visa, but you need to start early. You must E-mail a scan of your passport and arrival and departure dates to charatka@chiangmai.ac.th with the subject line ‘Thai Visa for PENAPH Conference.’ Please give your country of official residence so that CMU can prepare the right documents and send them to the right embassy.

The CMU secretariat will provide a letter of invitation from the conference. If you have been awarded a stipend, PENAPH will provide a letter indicating that you have financial support. If you are covering your own costs, you may be required to present a letter or proof of money to guarantee your living expenses will in Thailand. They will also send documents directly to the appropriate Thai Embassy for your country of residence.

You will also require a passport valid for at least 6 months, photos and a copy of your air ticket or electronic ticket

In a review article, ‘Rinderpest Eradication: Appropriate Technology and Social Innovations’ published in Science Magazine on September 14, 2012 about lessons from the eradication of rinderpest, the origins of participatory epidemiology and the contribution of participatory epidemiology to rinderpest eradication are described.

You can see the abstract at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1223805

So, in referencing PE, we can now reference Science!

The Mini-Symposium on Participatory Epidemiology (PE) at ISVEE 13 was well attended. For the keynote, the meeting room was filled to capacity with more interested people listening from the hall. Most people stayed on to hear the subsequent 6 papers. The topics covered included PE practice in research and surveillance as well as two papers evaluating PE methods. An application of PE in Japan looked at the psychological impact of the response to the last FMD outbreak there. PENAPH was interested to learn that the PE Manual has been translated into Japanese. Versions  now exist in English, Spanish, French, Russian and Japanese.

The presentations were followed by an open discussion that was frank and constructive. Participation in the discussion was very broad and covered topics like appropriate experimental design for validating techniques, ethical approval for research using participatory designs and PE as a tool to understand incentives and align stakeholder goals.

The PENAPH key note presentation can be viewed below or at Update on the Participatory Epidemiology Network for Animal and Public Health (PENAPH). The organizers for ISVEE 14 to be held in 2015 in Mexico have suggested a PE session and a pre or post ISVEE course. The bottom line is that participatory epidemiology has become conventional in epidemiology!

We had a large number of abstract submissions to the PENAPH First Technical Workshop being held in Chiang Mai on Dec 11-13, 2012. We accepted 34 abstracts out of 55 submissions as oral presentations. An additional 13 were accepted as posters. The abstracts were reviewed by a panel of 5 scientists drawn from the PENAPH core partners. Each abstract was reviewed by at least two reviewers based on a standard set of scoring criteria. Only the title and text of abstracts were provided to reviewers without the author’s names or other information. The scores were used to select abstracts and will also be used to prioritize the award of stipends. Individual authors will be informed of the results of the review by E-mail by Friday August 24^, 2012. If you submitted an abstract and have not received a notification, please alert us by sending an E-mail to  the Penaph-Abstract@cgiar.org address.

To be eligible to apply for a stipend you must EITHER be a citizen of a developing country OR a full time student from anywhere in the world AND have an oral or poster presentation accepted.

Those who are not presenting an abstract or poster may apply for a waiver of the conference fee. The only requirement is that applicants must EITHER be a citizen of a developing country OR a full time student from anywhere in the world.

Registration, payment of conference fees and hotel booking will be a three-step process. In the first step, participants will register and indicate if they wish to request a waiver of conference fees or stipend. The scientific committee will review all requests for waivers and inform those who have been awarded a waiver and give them a code for obtaining a conference ticket.

All those planning to attend should REGISTER and indicate if they would like to apply a waiver of the conference fee or stipend. The site for registration and to request a waiver is http://peworkshop.eventbrite.com/. You must request a waiver by September 10, 2012 to be considered. If you have submitted an abstract and are planning to request a stipend, please wait until you have received the E-mail with the results of the review of your abstract.

The second step will be payment of the conference fee (175 US Dollars). This is calculated to cover the cost of meals and logistical costs related to individual participation. If you have applied for a stipend or waiver, you will need to wait until we have reviewed your request to visit the payment site. If you have other sources of support, we request that you do not apply for a waiver as our ability to provide waivers is limited. We will inform you when the payment site is operational.

The Conference will be held at the Imperial Mae Ping Hotel in Chiang Mai and you can visit their website (http://www.imperialhotels.com/imperialmaeping) for a description of facilities. Room rates are 1,200 Baht for a single and 1,400 Bhat for a twin room including breakfast. A special rate with wifi is 100 Bhat more per day. The approximately 30 Bhat equal 1 US Dollar. For those who are granted a waiver of fees, they will still need to book and pay for their hotel. We will inform you when the hotel booking process is operational. Those with a waiver for conference fees will still need to book and pay for their hotel.

We estimate that the total local costs (conference fee, hotel and incidentals) will be 350 US Dollars. Participants without stipends will also need to budget for a visa and airfare to Bangkok and then on to Chiang Mai, as appropriate to their location.

We look forward to seeing you in Chiang Mai in December.

The Technical Workshop Organizing Committee

PENAPH is very pleased to announce that 56 abstracts were received from around the world in response to the call for abstracts for the PENAPH Technical Workshop that will be held in Chiang Mai on December 11-13, 2012. All abstracts are currently being anonymously reviewed by the scientific committee. The registration site should be up soon on this website.