Gunnar Tellnes

President's column: EUPHA is growing

I am very happy to write this last column for 2005, my last one as the president of EUPHA. It is good to see that EUPHA has strengthened its position as an international Public Health Organisation in 2005 using different instruments, which are as follows: nn1. An increase in our members from 48 to 50 member associations from 40 European countries, representing some 12 000 public health experts. It was a pleasure for me to play a role in this expansion by visiting Armenia as well as Greece in order to invite Public health organisations there to apply for membership in EUPHA.nn2. The improvement of our scientific journal, the European Journal of Public Health .nn3. The networking activities of EUPHA. EUPHA has seen an increase in request for collaboration and an increase in invitations to speak at conferences. As EUPHA president, I have been invited to speak at different international conferences during the last few months, for example the International conference on Safe community focusing on Violence prevention as well as a pre-meeting in Greece for the 1st European congress on Injury Prevention and safety Prevention to be held in Austria in 2006.nn4. The EUPHA database has not only increased the visibility of EUPHA, but also strengthened our networking possibilities. As you know the EUPHA database is an online system where every public health expert in Europe and beyond can register himself/herself.nn5. The further development of the EUPHA website. This included the database and a monthly update of the website with regard to upcoming conferences and recent publications. The average hits for the website over the last 9 months have been just >100u2009000 hits per month.nn6. The activities of our theme-specific sections have increased. At the same time, we have discussed a number of new sections to be created within EUPHA. …