President's column

European Journal of Public Health, Vol. 15, No. 1, 107–110 European Journal of Public Health, Vol. 15, No. 1, q European Public Health Association 2005; all rights reserved Doi: 10.1093/eurpub/cki129 European Public Health Association President’s column The 2004 annual conference took place in October in Oslo, Norway. It was indeed a very successful conference: we had just over 700 participants at the conference. Thanks to a combination of the grant from the Open Society Institute of the SOROS foundation and a subsidy from the European Commission, 64 central and Eastern Europeans could participate in the conference. We are very grateful to both sponsors and look forward to continuing this collaboration in the years to come. Of the 474 abstracts submitted from 38 countries, 299 were accepted: 125 for oral presentations in 25 parallel sessions, 22 as workshops and 152 for poster presentations. We would like to thank the International Scientific Committee, chaired by Prof. Dag Bruusgaard, University of Oslo, for their excellent work. All accepted abstracts were published in the EJPH abstract supplement. A last minute session was also organised, where public health experts could present the newest results of research or practice. This session was well attended and included presentations from 10 experts. A selection of presentations has been invited to write a chapter in the EUPHA book: Urbanisation and Health, which will be published next year. At the Oslo conference, the best abstract prize was awarded to Prof Ebba Holme Hansen of the Danish University of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Copenhagen for the abstract entitled: “Adolescents’ use of medicine for nervousness and socioeconomic position at individual and country levels: international cross-sectional survey.” The best poster prize was voted by the participants and was awarded to: Dr Thomas Clausen, Department of General Practice and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo for his poster: “Health inequalities in older persons in Botswana, a sub-Saharan African country in health transition.” Both prizes consist of a certificate and a waiver of the 2005 conference fees. During the annual meeting of the EUPHA Governing Council, the plans for 2005 onwards were accepted and we are very pleased with this. The most important change for EUPHA members is that they will receive the EJPH electronically from now on. In fact, this is the first issue that is distributed like that to all our members. This decision was necessary not only to improve the EJPH, but also to ensure the financial sustainability of EUPHA itself. At the Oslo conference, three new members of EUPHA were welcomed: † Kazakhstan Association of Public Health Specialists † Turkish Association of Public Health Specialists † Turkish Public Health Association As you can see on the next page, the number of EUPHA members has now increased to 48 of which 45 are member associations from 38 European countries and 3 are associate members. There is still room for EUPHA to grow, as the WHO/EURO definition of Europe includes 52 states. Finally, I want to thank the two past presidents of EUPHA, Prof. Walter Ricciardi and Prof. Wilhelm Kirch, our treasurer Prof. Juan Cabases, our Editorin-Chief, Prof. Johan Mackenbach and our manager Dineke Zeegers Paget for their great efforts and important work in 2004 to secure EUPHA’s economy and the EJPH for the future. 2005 is a year of consolidation and implementation. The decisions of the Governing Council will be implemented. The financial security of EUPHA will be organised. Projects will be further developed. It is a good year to be the EUPHA president! Prof. Gunnar Tellnes EUPHA president EUPHA office column Upcoming conferences: 2005 The 13th EUPHA annual conference will be held in Graz, Austria from 10– 12 November. The main theme of the conference is “Promoting the Public’s Health: reorienting health policies, linking health promotion and health care”. The conference is organised by the Austrian Public Health Association in co-operation with the Slovenian Preventive Medicine Society and the Croatian Public Health Association. 2006 The 2006 annual conference will be held in Montreux, Switzerland, 16– 18 November. The theme for the conference is “Politics and (or) the public’s health: between politics and service”. 2007 The 2007 EUPHA conference will be organised by the Society for Social Medicine in Finland. The proposed theme is the Future of Public Health in an Unified Europe. For the years after 2007, we already have a number of our members very interested. For 2008, there is a clear interest from the Portuguese Association for Public Health Promotion; for 2009, both our Polish and Turkish members are interested. And the 2010 EUPHA conference will be organised by the Netherlands Public Health Federation. The 10 existing EUPHA sections increased their activities. At the 2004 conference, nine of the existing sections organised workshops. All sections organised an annual meeting and one section (social security and health) organised its second pre-conference meeting. The president of the EUPHA section on public health epidemiology, Prof. Klim McPherson, stepped down. EUPHA would like to thank him for the many years he enthusiastically presided the section. No direct successor could be found, but three very willing members have agreed to be in charge at least until the 2005 conference. These are: Prof. Paolo Villari and Dr Giuseppe La Torre from Italy and Prof. Leyland from the UK. The sections already informed the EUPHA Executive Council of their plans for 2005. They are planning to become even more active. Furthermore, several initiatives for new sections were presented in Oslo. EUPHA is very pleased with this development and we hope that these initiatives will be made reality at the end of 2005. EUPHA is at the moment collaborating in a number of projects, among which:The EUPHA/OSI project to support public health associations in central and Eastern Europe. Together with the Open Society Institute (OSI) of the SOROS foundation, EUPHA initiated a project for the support of public health associations as key links between government, the scientific community and the population in central and Eastern Europe. The project was started in 2003 and will continue until late 2005. Seven countries are participating: Albania, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Kazakhstan, Romania and Serbia and Montenegro. ASPHER/EUPHA accreditation project EUPHA will continue its collaboration with the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER) in a project to further the setting up of an independent accreditation agency for public health training programmes in Europe. SPHERE project The SPHERE project stands for Strengthening Public Health Research in Europe. The project was initiated at the conference in Dresden by the president of 108 European Journal of Public Health Vol. 15, No. 1, 107–110 the EUPHA S (...truncated)