Good News from Field Epidemiology in Action!
The Field Epidemiology in Action (FEiA) team are thrilled to announce we have been awarded a further $7.5 million to build on our work supporting public health training programs in the Pacific! We are very grateful to Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) for their continued support of our work.
There are two key branches of our work – Train & Sustain, and Connect & Apply. Cutting across both of these branches are our commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion, and continuous quality improvement to maximise impact.
Train & Sustain
Under Train & Sustain, we will continue to support high impact public health training programs that meet international standards and are sustainably run by National or Provincial governments. This includes ongoing support for the intermediate Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP), One Health frontline FETP and Rapid Response Team training in Papua New Guinea (PNG), and the intermediate FETP in Solomon Islands. We are also excited to be partnering with the Vanuatu Ministry of Health as they establish their national FETP! The launch of this program will be guided by a Theory of Change workshop FEiA facilitated in2023. We are also planning to run a Theory of Change process in Fiji as they seek to establish a Government-owned intermediate FETP, and continuing collaborating with the Timor-Leste Ministry of Health and Menzies School of Health Research as our Timor-Leste colleagues begin the process of launching their own national FETP.
Connect & Apply
Connect & Apply focuses on ensuring previous and continued investments in building field epidemiology and public health capacity have tangible impacts for the populations our graduates serve. To achieve this, FEiA will grow and formalise efforts to engage and mentor FETP graduates and faculty to apply their epi skills in the workplace, while building peer-to-peer support through developing active alumni networks. We will also work with our Government partners to sensitise key decision makers as to what it is field epidemiologists do, the immense value they can bring to health systems, and how their skillsets can best be utilised. Following the successes of our Reference Guide for Field Epis and eLearning courses, FEiA will also develop and share additional resources that support the global field epidemiology community. To implement our plans for Connect and Apply, we will be working closely with the wider field epidemiology community, and particularly our friends at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University.
Gender Equity, Diversity & Social Inclusion
FEiA is committed to ensuring that practices of equity, diversity and inclusivity are central to all training programs we support, including in terms of gender and disability. In our day-to-day work in the Pacific, we will focus on building relationships with Ministries and representative organisations, such as for gender and disability, to tailor our programs to be as inclusive as possible. We will continue to plan the world’s first gender analysis of FETPs to create a picture of how gender intersects with experiences of field epidemiology, in order that training and systems can be more responsive to gender needs.
Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning for Impact
And finally, what are we doing if we’re not having a measurable impact? We are committed to making sure the initiatives we support are as effective as possible by using learning through rigorous monitoring and evaluation to drive continuous quality improvement. FEiA thrives on innovation and developing tools and resources to support the global FEPT community, including sharing the very first FETP impact evaluation framework.
We are looking forward to working alongside our amazing colleagues from the Pacific, Timor-Leste and around the world. Stay tuned for updates along the way!
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