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The Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER) is the key independent European organisation dedicated to improving and protecting the public health by strengthening education and training of public health professionals for both practice and research.
The main functions of the Association are:
To support the professionalisation of the public health workforce in Europe, whilst respecting the diversity of national and regional contexts in which each school of public health operates, and thus:
To sustain capacity building in public health, so that it balances with national and European population health challenges and threats, and is supported by best standards of public health education and training, scientific research, and practice.
The general objectives of ASPHER are:
To sustain, in theory and practice, member schools in achieving their missions of education, training, scientific research and service;
To develop models for public health education and training at all academic and professional levels, and the interaction of education and training with population health, health systems and services;
To promote structured processes of sharing evidence-based public health models of innovation and good practice;
To build coalitions with other programmes and public health organisations whose mission is to improve public health, specifically in an effort to put forth high standards in and strengthen public health education and training and to improve the quality of the public health workforce in Europe and its competitiveness globally.
ASPHER is a membership organisation of institutions, spread across EU and wider across WHO European Region, which are collectively concerned with the education and training, and professionalism, of those entering and working within the public health workforce. It promotes activities which foster exchange of information and best practices amongst its members in an effort to achieve high standards of public health education and training across Europe.
Carlo Signorelli
ASPHER President
Carlo Signorelli is full Professor of Hygiene and Public Health at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University of Milan and Director of the School of Public health (Igiene e Medicina Preventiva). Degrees in Medicine & Surgery, Law and Political Sciences. Master and PhD in Epidemiology from the University of London (LSHTM) and PhD in public health. Author of over 1,600 scientific and journalistic publications (360 of which on PubMed and 40 university textbooks, h-index 39). Coordinator of research projects including EU Commission H2020 on economic and social aspects of COVID-19. He has been and is a member of several commissions and working groups including the COVID-19 Technical Scientific Committee of the Lombardy Region.
Professor Signorelli gained teaching experience in various universities including Milan Polytechnic, Bocconi, Sapienza, Parma, LIUC, Maastricht and LSHTM. He is Past-President of the Italian Society of Hygiene, Preventive Medicine and Public Health, President of the Association of the Schools of Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER) and President of the Italian National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NITAG). He is a freelance scientific journalist and editor of the Newsletter.
Robert Otok
ASPHER Director
Robert joined ASPHER in 2008. Responsible at the beginning for the setting up and organisation of the Association’s office in Brussels, he now coordinates the work of the ASPHER executive board, managing the largest network of schools of public health in the world. He has an extensive experience in developing, implementing and coordinating projects supporting the public health workforce development and professionalisation in Europe; both at individual countries as well as the European level (the latter including advisory and consultancy positions in ECDC and WHO Europe relevant programmes). He actively supports/participates in selected training and research activities of ASPHER members; since 2011 he has also served as member of the editorial board of Public Health Reviews, the open access journal promoting public health knowledge and best practices, published on behalf of ASPHER. Finally, he is responsible for day-to-day operation of the Association and represents ASPHER in international contexts. Robert was awarded Fellowship of the Faculty of Public Health (London) in June 2018.
Lore Leighton
ASPHER Secretariat
Lore is a member of the ASPHER Secretariat since 2019 in charge of communications, member relations and project management. Previously she was the Managing Editor of the Association’s journal Public Health Reviews (PHR) under ASPHER and the École des Hautes Études en Santé Publique (EHESP). Lore studied biochemistry at Northern Michigan University and was employed as a Research Specialist at Rockefeller University, New York and University of California at Berkeley before moving to Europe in 2007. In addition to her responsibilities at ASPHER, she has freelanced as a science writer, editor and illustrator for scientific journals and textbooks.