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Workshops 2017

workshop discussion

The dialogue is always at the heart Uppsala Health Summit. Delegates share experiences and ideas from their different backgrounds, and deliver concrete suggestions on next steps to take at different levels and by various stakeholders.

Workshops at the summit

Zoonotic Diseases in Livestock – Mitigating Risk Behaviour

Efforts to prevent zoonotic diseases among livestock is highly dependent on human behaviours, and thus on the systems incentivizing behaviours, explicitly or implicitly. This workshop will discuss how we can create long lasting changes of behaviours to prevent transmission of zoonotic infections among livestock to the human population. Having defined the role of social and cultural aspects of human behaviours for controlling zoonotic livestock diseases, the workshop will start drafting guidelines for how to make best use of how economic incentives, and communication efforts to modify risk behaviour and create sustainable changes.

We will start out from a recent case study of handling Brucellosis in Tajikistan, but the outcome is intended to be applicable for a wide range of zoonotic diseases and be adaptable to different settings.

Inspirational speakers:

Moderator:

  • Peter Ballantyne, ILRI

Workshop prepared by:

  • Dr.Sofia Boqvist DVM, Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Science and Veterinary Public Health, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
  • Dr.Ulf Magnusson, DVM, Professor, Department of Clinical Sciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Empowered and Resilient Communities – A Need for New Perspectives

When outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases occur, the most disadvantaged and resource-poor communities are the most vulnerable. We have recently seen Ebola and Zika hitting these settings. Experiences show that responses need to be not only top-down health system oriented, but must incorporate a contextual understanding and utilize community resources and knowledge. In this workshop, we will discuss strategies that depart in the community, rather than on global policy level, in order to empower resource poor communities.

The overall goal is to identify challenges, benefits and new strategies for bottom-up approaches to address emerging threats from infectious diseases.

Inspirational speakers:

  • Dr. Paul Richards, Professor Emeritus of technology and agrarian development at the University of Wageningen, Netherlands, and author of “Ebola - How a People´s Science Helped End an Epidemic".
  • Dr. Gunilla Hallonsten, Director of Policy for Church of Sweden.
  • Dr. Samson M. Haumba, Country Director, URC University Research Co, LLC Swaziland
  • Dr. Anders Nordström, Ambassador for Global Health, UN Policy Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sweden

Moderator:

  • Dr. Maria Teresa Bejarano, Senior Research Advisor, SIDA

Workshop prepared by:

Dr. Mats Målqvist, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Women's and Children's Health, International Maternal and Child Health, Uppsala University

A Roadmap for Effective Diagnostics to Combat Global Infectious Disease

Efficient management and prevention of infectious disease is critically depending on robust, fast and affordable diagnostic methods. There is great potential for adopting recent technological advances for practical use, but several obstacles will have to be overcome, not least if we want to develop these tools for use in resource poor settings.

This workshop will identify the major bottlenecks and discuss who should take the lead in developing, validating and providing such diagnostic tools. What incentives are there for venture capital and business to invest in this sector and what will be the role of not-for-profit and government-supported stakeholders? How can we accelerate this development to make emerging diagnostic tools for the future?

Inspirational Speakers:

Moderator:

  • Ulf Bley, Nowa Kommunikation

Workshop prepared by:

  • Dr.Stefan Bertilsson, Professor at the Department of Ecology and Genetics, Uppsala University
  • Dr.Josef Järhult, MD, Researcher at the Department of Medical Sciences, Uppsala University
  • Dr.Åsa Melhus, MD, Professor at Department of Medical Sciences, Uppsala University
  • Dr.Aristidis Moustakas, Professor at the Department Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology, Uppsala University
  • Dr.Eva Molin, Vice Head of Operations, SciLifeLab, Uppsala University

New Vaccines and Medicines: Monitor Safety in Emergency Situations

An increasing number of new drugs and vaccines against infectious diseases are being developed primarily for use in countries with limited health care and drug regulatory infrastructures. Such systems may not be adequate to conduct post marketing safety surveillance as is routinely performed when new drugs are introduced into US or European markets. Situations can be further complicated with deployment of new medicines during “extreme” emergency situations and within the context of other endemic infectious diseases.

This workshop will gather experiences from planning and implementing programs to monitor the safety of new drugs and vaccines in resource-limited situations.

The goal is to define a reasonable minimum for monitoring the safety of new vaccines for prevention of infectious diseases and of treatments, to be included as recommendations for public health authorities, industry and international organisations working in humanitarian emergency contexts.

Inspirational speakers:

  • Dr. Wiltshire Johnson, Registrar and CEO, Pharmacy Board of Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone
  • Dr.Nils Feltelius, MD, PhD, Assoc professor, Senior scientific advisor, Scientific Support Unit, Medical Products Agency, Sweden

Workshop prepared by:

  • Dr. Rebecca Chandler, MD, Research Physician, Uppsala Monitoring Centre
  • Paula Alvarado, BA, MA, Head of Global Communications, Uppsala Monitoring Centre (Moderator)

Innovation and Big Data in Health Surveillance

In an era of ubiquitous electronic collection of data, there is a growing opportunity to monitor the health of populations in real-time. This will allow early detection of signs of disease introduction, natural or manmade, as well as produce information to support prevention and control.
There are however challenges that we need to overcome, such as processing a large variety of sometimes noisy data, reasoning with medical knowledge, and producing valuable outputs for actors in different contexts. Efficient surveillance must also support decision-making and action.

This workshop will work on a list of identified challenges for the implementation of systems capable of transforming data into actionable information for One Health Surveillance, classify these challenges according to opportunities for improvement and impact, and propose a set of priorities and potential solutions. The outcome will help public health officials to operationalize data-driven health surveillance systems.

Inspirational speakers:

Workshop prepared by:

  • Dr.Fernanda Dórea, BVetMed, MSc., PhD, Researcher, National Veterinary Institute

Whose Priorities Count? Empowering Scientific Capacities for Locally-Relevant and Sustainable Solutions

Researchers, research funding and infectious disease spread unevenly across the globe. Although disease mortality and morbidity rates are important for determining scientific priorities, other factors including the social, economic, cultural, and geographic attributes of affected populations also influence the attention that specific diseases receive. In cases where there is general agreement on which priorities count, there can be disagreement or misunderstanding amongst local and international partners about the specific aspects of health and wellbeing that should be given precedence in research. Meanwhile, in low income countries, where the impact of infectious disease is disproportionately high, investments in research to prevent or mitigate disease remains far too limited.

This workshop is designed to identify policy guidelines to support locally-driven research initiatives on aspects of infectious disease that are otherwise overlooked or neglected. Questions will be raised regarding how to develop a decentralized priority-setting and an integrated One Health approach, while continuing to benefit from international collaborations and synergies.

The goal is to produce guidelines for further empowering local and national researchers and institutions to identify and prioritize locally relevant infectious disease research agendas, and research funders to facilitate scientists at both local and international levels.

Inspirational speakers:

Moderator:

  • Dr. Hannah Akuffo, Director, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, (SIDA) and Professor of Parasitology at Karolinska Institutet.

Workshop prepared by:

  • Dr. Eren Zink, Coordinator, Forum for Africa Studies, and Senior Researcher at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University

Drivers and Constraints in Modern Typing Tools for Detection of Foodborne Disease

Food borne infectious diseases pose a serious risk for public health, but may also cause unnecessary economic harm on food producers if not properly detected. International trade has opened up a wide offer of food commodities benefitting both consumers and producers globally. Food safety is an asset in the interest of all parties, and a One Health perspective is needed for any sustainable strategy. Molecular typing tools together with the new generation of sequencing tools open up great possibilities for fast and secure detection of food borne infectious diseases, detecting the source of the infection.

To make proper use of this opportunity, surveillance administrations on regional, national and international levels need to implement not only the technologies but also an efficient system for response over the entire chain of actors, from farm to fork.

This workshop will focus on the constraints for implementing a modern detection system, including aspects such as legal and socio-economic barriers to sharing and using typing data. The discussions will start out from the current European discussions on a joint molecular typing database with data from animals, feed, food and humans.

The goal is to produce a list of the most urgent constraints to address to implement modern typing technologies to detect and stop food borne infectious diseases in an efficient way.

Inspirational speakers:

Moderator:

  • Ulf Bley, Nowa Kommunikation

Workshop prepared by:

  • Dr. Mats Lindblad, Communicable disease coordinator, the National Food Agency
  • Dr. Ann Lindberg, State epizootiologist, National Veterinary Institute
  • Dr. Catarina Flink, Microbiologist, National Food Agency
  • Dr. Cecilia Jernberg, Specialist Foodborne diseases, The Public Health Agency of Sweden (External expert)

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