Welcome to the participatory epidemiology (PE) discussion forum.  Please consider the following email and attached information sheet as your invitation to attend.

We hope you’ll join us over the next month as we examine the past, present, and future applications of PE. The overall goal of this project will be to build on prior lessons learned and further advance PE by:

• providing a definition of PE with various examples of successful implementation
• highlighting avenues for its inclusion in projects
• indicating what future improvements can be made and how they may arise
• summarising all of the above in to a published report

If you are receiving this email it is because you have previously participated in a PE workshop, FAO funded training on PE, been identified as an expert, or have contributed to a past PE report.  Should you not wish to participate in this forum simply reply to this email with your request under the subject header “REMOVE”. Conversely, if you know of others who may wish to participate please have them contact us at this email.

The purpose of this email is to provide an overview of the project, present a timeline, and answer any questions you may have before the forum commences next week.

Duration and structure of the email discussion

The discussions are envisaged to be over a period of 3 weeks, each week discussing a new theme. The discussion will begin on Monday 12 October, when participants will be asked to send their contributions (responses, questions, or concerns) to Ryan Aguanno at FAO-participatory-epi-L@fao.org. We would appreciate concise responses and encourage the use of personal observations and experiences.  However we do ask that if appropriate, references are utilised.  The discussion will be private and moderated to ensure members are not flooded with emails and topics are accurately addressed.

As with projects and studies utilising PE, success is dependent on eliciting participation from all members. We look forward to reading your inputs concerning the weekly topic for debate.  The schedule for the three weeks of discussion will be as follows:

Weekly topics to be discussed

The following topics will be provided at the start of the week along with some background information to help shape the discussion:

We look forward to your active participation. Should you have any immediate questions you may reply directly to this email. Beginning next week we will begin communication using the FAO-participatory-epi-L@fao.org address.

To unsubscribe from the FAO-Participatory-EPI-L list, click the following link:

https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=FAO-Participatory-EPI-L&A=1