Decision Makers

Rhett Krawit is a Californian 7-year-old kid. He survived leukaemia after a fight lasted three-and-half years that left his immune system highly compromised. He wants to go to school and he has any right to do so, but he cannot do it safely. Rhett cannot be vaccinated because his immune system is still rebuilding and the presence of unvaccinated children exposes him to diseases like measles and chicken pox, which could be lethal for him. An actual risk, since in almost one fourth of Californian schools the herd immunity has been lost because of vaccine hesitancy and refusal.

Monday, November 23, 2015 (All day)

Ministers and senior representatives of Member States in the European Region will meet to discuss the numerous public health challenges posed by large-scale movements of refugees and migrants to transit and destination countries. These range from management of communicable and noncommunicable diseases to the impact of large-scale migration on health systems. Given the inter-regional relevance of this topic, ministers from the main countries of origin and of transit of refugees and migrants – in the Eastern Mediterranean and African regions – are also invited.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 13:00

Members of the ECOM project will gather for a final symposium on November 10th 2015 in Stockholm, prior to the European Scientific Conference on Applied Infectious Disease Epidemiology (ESCAIDE). ECOM – which stands for Effective Communication in Outbreak Management – is an EU funded project that aims to develop strategies for improving risk-communication during major pandemic outbreaks in Europe.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015 (All day)

The 2015 ESCAIDE conference will take place on 11-13 November 2015. It will be hosted at the Stockholm Waterfront Congress Centre, in the heart of the city. The ESCAIDE programme will offer a huge range of exciting presentations, posters, seminars and workshops on all aspects of infectious disease prevention and control.

Italy is facing a serious drop in vaccine coverage, which are falling close to – and in some cases even below – the target set by the Minister of Health in the current national plan for vaccine prevention. This is a serious  problem for public health, since, for infections transmitted from man to man (tetanus being an exception), a high coverage is necessary to protect those people that cannot be vaccinated either because of their age or because of clinical reasons, such as for cancer therapies, through the mechanism of herd immunity.

September 17, 2015

From August 30 to September 5, the “Ettore Majorana” Centre for Scientific Culture in Erice hosted the “Mathematical and Computational Epidemiology of Infectious diseases” international conference. Aim of this event was to illustrate the major areas of research in mathematical and computational modelling of the spread of infectious diseases, and the huge variety of tools and approaches that are currently employed.

Thursday, September 17, 2015 - 10:00

Technology and top-down political decisions are not enough if Europe wants to become a low-carbon society. Broad civil society participation is key to this transition. The European Commission has acknowledged that the governance process of the new Energy Union should “involve an energy dialogue with stakeholders to inform policy-making and support active engagement in managing the energy transition.”

Monitoring health on a large scale through Big Data or using social networks to modify behaviour and risk factors are two relevant examples of how cutting edge technology may provide new and powerful tools against infectious diseases.

Many public and private agencies and bodies gather data from social networks and search engines to try and identify health emergencies and solve the problem: the most common approach is to analyze the search strings used by Google and the texts of blogs, forums and other pages on the Net.

Thursday, September 17, 2015 - 10:30

On September 17, 2015, the NEN (Netherlands Standardization Institute) will host the workshop ‘Ethical Impact Assessment for Research and Innovation’. The Workshop is organized by the SATORI project and will assess the feasibility of European consensus for such a framework.

Pages

Subscribe to Decision Makers

MMLAP and other EU Projects

Health system analysis to support capacity development in response to the threat of pandemic influenza in Asia
Making society an active participant in water adaptation to global change
Public Participation in Developing a Common Framework for Assessment and Management of Sustainable Innovation
Engaging all of Europe in shaping a desirable and sustainable future
Expect the unexpected and know how to respond
Driving innovation in crisis management for European resilience
Effective communication in outbreak management: development of an evidence-based tool for Europe
Solutions to improve CBRNe resilience
Network for Communicable Disease Control in Southern Europe and Mediterranean Countries
Developing the framework for an epidemic forecast infrastructure
Strengthening of the national surveillance system for communicable diseases
Surveillance of vaccine preventable hepatitis
European monitoring of excess mortality for public health action
European network for highly infectious disease
Dedicated surveillance network for surveillance and control of vaccine preventable diseases in the EU
Modelling the spread of pandemic influenza and strategies for its containment and mitigation
Cost-effectiveness assessment of european influenza human pandemic alert and response strategies
Bridging the gap between science, stakeholders and policy makers
Promotion of immunization for health professionals in Europe
Towards inclusive research programming for sustainable food innovations
Addressing chronic diseases and healthy ageing across the life cycle
Medical ecosystem – personalized event-based surveillance
Studying the many and varied economic, social, legal and ethical aspects of the recent developments on the Internet, and their consequences for the individual and society at large
Get involved in the responsible marine research and innovation
Knowledge-based policy-making on issues involving science, technology and innovation, mainly based upon the practices in Parliamentary Technology Assessment
Assessment of the current pandemic preparedness and response tools, systems and practice at national, EU and global level in priority areas
Analysis of innovative public engagement tools and instruments for dynamic governance in the field of Science in Society
Public Engagement with Research And Research Engagement with Society
Computing Veracity – the Fourth Challenge of Big Data
Providing infrastructure, co-ordination and integration of existing clinical research networks on epidemics and pandemics
Promote vaccinations among migrant population in Europe
Creating mechanisms for effectively tackling the scientific and technology related challenges faced by society
Improve the quality of indoor air, keeping it free from radon
Improving respect of ethics principles and laws in research and innovation, in line with the evolution of technologies and societal concerns
Investigating how cities in the West securitise against global pandemics
Creating a structured dialogue and mutual learning with citizens and urban actors by setting up National Networks in 10 countries across Europe
Identifying how children can be change agents in the Science and Society relationship
Establishing an open dialogue between stakeholders concerning synthetic biology’s potential benefits and risks
Transparent communication in Epidemics: Learning Lessons from experience, delivering effective Messages, providing Evidence