Advancing knowledge to strengthen public health policies and interventions
Happy World Field Epidemiology Day!
The theme for 2022 is Empowering Field Epidemiologists for Stronger Health Systems. As we wrote in an earlier blog, to celebrate, we are sharing weekly stories from Pacific field epidemiologists on the frontlines in our programs for each of the Day’s six sub-themes.
Today we are pleased to introduce you to Bernnedine Smaghi, a Field Epidemiology Training in Papua New Guinea (FETPNG) graduate, Advanced FETPNG fellow and, now, also FETPNG Convenor.
Bernnedine Smaghi
For our final blog in the series, we thought we’d share something a little special: a video blog from Bernnie, sharing about her experience in working on the first telephone survey ever conducted in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The study was seeking to understand barriers and enablers to COVID-19 across the country to strengthen testing uptake and capacity in order to better understand the epidemiological situation and to inform public health interventions. Here, she speaks about this experience, addressing the sixth and final sub-theme for World Field Epidemiology Day 2022: Advancing knowledge to strengthen public health policies and interventions.
Key findings from the study are presented in the infographic below:
These findings were used to support a range of recommendations made to strengthen COVID-19 testing training, infrastructure and practice across PNG.
Bernnie and colleagues went on to publish the results of this study, and to compile a comprehensive report, which are both freely available for download here:
Thank you Bernnie!
If you missed our previous World Field Epidemiology Day sub-theme blogs featuring John Landime sharing about his experience fighting outbreaks and health emergencies, including COVID-19, on the frontlines, Symphorian Sumun sharing about strengthening surveillance systems to detect public health threats early, Stanley Masi sharing his experience of enabling effective outbreak management and public health emergency response, Timen Apae writing about ensuring quality health data for evidence-informed policy and decision-making, or Bethseba Peni speaking about working at the frontline of One Health on human, animal and environmental health, you can catch up here.
This was our final blog in our World Field Epidemiology Day series for 2022! We will, however, continue sharing stories from our dedicated field epi colleagues having impact in the Pacific. Make sure you subscribe here to have all the feel-good field epi news delivered straight to your inbox each month!