The Asia-Pacific Early Career Network in Public Health (APECNPH) is the brainchild of 2nd Year MPH student Michelle Wong and colleagues from the University of Southern California. Michelle and her colleagues identified a need for a network to support students and those at the early stages of their career to get a better awareness and understanding of global public health issues.
Michelle’s experiences in China, where she assisted in pilot studies related to health behaviour, have helped her to understand that key partnerships and collaborations are essential to the success of any public health venture. She hopes that the network will provide a context in which peers and professionals all over the world can connect with one another, build new friendships and exchange knowledge, support, and resources.
‘I discussed the idea for a network of early career professionals with APACPH Secretary-General, Dr Walter Patrick, at the East-West Conference in April and he saw how the APACPH membership might also benefit from this initiative. With the help of the APACPH Directorate Office, I have now set up a working committee consisting of students and early career faculty from APACPH member institutions to discuss how this network might function and some of the activities it should be involved with,’ Michelle Wong remarked.
So far, there are ‘early career’ individuals involved from the Regional Center for PHC, Cholburi Province, Thailand; Dept of Internal Medicine, Kuala Lumpur Hospital, Malaysia; World Health Organisation, Sri Lanka; Kazakhstan School of Public Health, Kazakhstan;University of the Ryukyus, Japan; Center for Health Risk Assessment and Policy, National Taiwan University, Taiwan; Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Monash University; School of Public Health, Queensland University of Technology; School of Public Health, Sydney University,Australia; Keck School of Medicine,University of Southern California and Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, USA.
The first activity of this network will be a pre-conference workshop in Taipei on Saturday 19th November aimed specifically at this group. The title of the workshop is ‘Identifying and understanding the Region’s major public health issues’ and participants will be encouraged to bring information on the major public health issues from their own countries in order to explore and understand the similarities and differences between countries and the implications these have for public health teaching and research programs throughout the Region.
Students and early career professionals attending the workshop and the conference will have the opportunity to meet and connect with experienced researchers and experts in their respective fields, meet students from all over the world, be part of the APECNPH development team and initiate research papers/topics with public health professionals from all over the world.
Those interested in hearing more about the Asia-Pacific Early Career Public Health Network or the Early Career Workshop at the Taipei Conference should contact Michelle Wong (wongmich@usc.edu) or the APACPH Directorate Office (sonja@apacph.org).
More details will also be available on the APACPH website www.apacph.org under ‘APACPH Activities’.
