ASPHER Working Group on Doctoral Programmes and Research Capacities

Chair: Fred Paccaud, (Swiss School of Public Health+)
Tel: +41 44 634 4703, mailto:fpaccaud@ssphplus.ch

Co-chair: Ursula Schlipköter (SPH Faculty of Medicine Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich)
mailto:schli@ibe.med.uni-muenchen.de

PhD Education in Public Health: Guidelines and Recommendations (November 2009)
A position paper from ASPHER in response to the ORPHEUS paper (April 2009)
on standards for PhD Education in Biomedicine and Health Sciences

Activities since November 2009:
Preparatory work through the Committee chaired by Ursula Ackermann-Liebrich on “PhD Education in Public Health: Background and guidelines”, largely based on a position paper called “Towards Standards for PhD Education in Biomedicine and Health Sciences” elaborated by an association called ORPHEUS (Organisation for PhD Education in Biomedicine and Health Sciences in the European System).

1. Exchange of ideas via Teleconference (Paccaud/Schlipköter) in November 2009, in December 2009, and in January 2010
2. Fred Paccaud’s Revision of position paper “Background and Guidelines” prepared by Ursula Ackermann-Liebrich in January 2010
3. Building up a Coordinating Committee on Doctoral programmes and Research capacity in PH in the European Region: create and send letter to the PhD network and to all schools evincing interest in the topic (survey ASPHER 2015 project) in January 2010

Future activities:

1. Building up a Coordinating Committee on Doctoral programmes and Research capacity in PH in the European Region based on the feed-back (s. a.) to query until the end of February 2010. The group chaired by US and FP will be composed with two distinct sub committees : (i) a board of 6 persons (incl. the co-chairs) who will elaborate the final document, thus nominated because of their availability and (ii) an advisory group of ten or fifteen persons nomitated because of their familiarity with the issue at stake. Suggestions from the ASPHER directorate are most welcome.
2. Getting in touch with the ORPHEUS committee to know how far we can coordinate our activities: February 2010.
3. First teleconference with Committee first week of March 2010.
4. Establishing working group to raise money for scholarships (i.e., explore the possibilities to create a common fund to grant doctoral students seeking an European PhD.
5. Establishing working group to finalize the set of Guidelines ORPHEUS-ASPHER (s. a.), including the implementation of a granting system for doctoral students until end of September 2010.
6. Meeting in October 2010 to finalize the guidelines.
7. Presentation of the guidelines at the Aspher Congress in Amsterdam, November 2010