Promoting public health is now more important than ever: European Public Health Week 11-15 May 2020

Organised by the European Public Health Association (EUPHA), the European Public Health Week aims to bring practitioners and researchers together from across Europe under the slogan “Joining forces for healthier populations”.
Events and activities will be held throughout Europe by organisations, universities, and individuals. Last year saw 145 registered events in 35 countries. The emergence of COVID-19 means that events will be online this year. There is an overarching theme to the week for COVID-19: Collaboration, Coordination, Communication, which means that COVID-19 related activities may take place on any day of the week. In addition, each day is dedicated to a distinct public health theme (which may or may not be COVID-19 related).

          Monday 11 May Promoting health through the Global Goals
          Tuesday 12 May Primary care in the digital age
          Wednesday 13 May Staying together for mental health
          Thursday 14 May Equal health for all
          Friday 15 May Grow old, grow healthy

Further contributions to European Public Health Week are welcome, and there are three ways of getting involved.

1. Host an online event. Events can take a variety of formats; you can download EUPHA’s 10 step guide to hosting a webinar, or you could consider a range of alternative formats including launching videos or other outputs, social media campaigns, and virtual networking events. Submit your event to EUPHA using their online form for help with visibility and dissemination. And use the media toolkit to give your event the European Public Health Week brand.
2. Participate in activities being organised by other people. Attend a webinar, join in a Twitter chat – help to make other people’s events successful. The full list of registered events is available here – this will be updated until 3 May.
3. Disseminate activities that are going on elsewhere. Even without hosting or participating in an event, you can make other people aware of what is going on. You can start by alerting people to the European Public Health Week website.

The week begins with a panel discussion webinar at 08:30 BST on Monday 11 May. You can register for the webinar by emailing “Register kick-off” to EUPHAcommunications@eupha.org, and can ask questions of the panellists on Facebook and Twitter using #EUPHWkickoff. You can find details at the kick-off event website.

Any questions? If you cannot find the answer on the European Public Health Week website then email EUPHAcommunications@eupha.org. Enjoy #EUPHW – and don’t forget to let @SocSocMed know what you are doing!

EUPHA Liaising Officer

Professor Alastair Leyland