ESHG Education Committee
The importance of education in genetics in Europe:
Human and Medical geneticists throughout the world are involved in teaching and educating modern human and medical genetics and genomics.
Educational efforts can be aimed at the general public, at medical and biomedical students, at professionals in training for a genetic specialty, at genetic specialists as part of continuing education, and at other healthcare professionals.
Existing efforts:
Each target audience has its own needs, and ESHG already has activities with an educational perspective. These include:
- Educational sessions at the annual ESHG conference a part of continuing professional education
- ESHG course in Bertinoro and elsewhere for young professional in Genetics, and genetic counsellors
- DNA day essay contest involving school children throughout Europe.
- One-day School event associated with the annual meeting organized by the local hosts
New developments in 2015:
The ESHG executive board proposes to establish a new Education Committee that will consist of 4 working groups, each tasked with overseeing one of these activities. This has been decided at the ESHG board meeting during our annual meeting in Glasgow.
During the last year, the Society has significantly expanded its course portfolio. ESHG has a long tradition of providing courses that aim at young professionals in all areas and subspecialties of Human Genetics.
A number of courses are run at Bertinoro in Italy. These include annual courses in Medical genetics, and in Next Generation Sequencing, and bi-annual courses on Genetic Counseling, and on Ophthalmic genetics.
The dysmorphology course in Manchester has also become something of a tradition.
New additions are planned for 2015 – 2017 notably courses on cardiac genetics, hereditary cancer, prenatal and preimplantation genetics, and statistical genetics.
ESHG will provide fellowships to especially enable students from low-income countries to attend, in addition to those from more privileged countries who can pay their way.
With these new additions, a concerted program of professional continued education is taking shape.
Further plans will be explored by the new Education Committee after Glasgow.
On behalf of the ESHG Education Committee,
Han Brunner, Chair
Members of the Education Committee
- Han Brunner, The Netherlands, Chair, ESHG course portfolio
- Christophe Cordier, Switzerland, ESHG DNA Day coordination
- Domenico Coviello, Italy, School children event during the ESHG annual meeting
- Edward Tobias, United Kingdom, Educational Materials