Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación

Training Programme

The CIBERESP Training Plan is a transverse programme with the fundamental objective of promoting training for public health researchers and consolidating their professional career in this discipline. For this reason, priority is given to looking after and training young staff members who are associated with CIBER-ESP Research Groups. This strategic plan consolidates the already established training activities and raises some novelties. The actions are hinged on two basic lines that are shared by other CIBER training programmes: mobility actions intended for aiding in contacting and working with other national or international groups, and further training actions which seek to improve and reward the quality of scientific work or to potentiate its dissemination in Public Health forums.

Mobility Actions

  • International mobility: aid for short internships abroad to study a doctorate with international mention. In its support in potentiating quality of the training received by Public Health researchers, CIBER-ESP has funded an annual call for proposals for aid for internships at prestigious international research centres with a minimum duration of 3 months, aimed at doctoral students from within or associated with research groups in the consortium for the purpose of contributing to obtaining international mention on their doctorate degree.
  • Internal mobility: Aid for internships in CIBERESP groups. To contribute to collaborative work and to take advantage of the strengths and complementarities between groups, an intramural call for proposals for travel allowances intended to help researchers who have short internships in other CIBERESP groups which require traveling is established. This type of aid was already contemplated in the initial phases of CIBERESP and is returning in this new phase.

Specific actions for further training

  • Public Health Excellence Encounter: For over 8 years, the CIBERESP Training Programme has been sponsoring and funding Public Health Excellence Encounters in the framework of Public Health Summer School of Menorca. The objective of these Encounters is to give young scientists being trained in Public Health the chance to directly discuss and exchange ideas about their doctoral dissertation projects with accredited scientists in this field, in an informal environment. The purpose of this senior/junior contact is to improve projects, facilitate innovation in public health research and their inclusion in the health challenges of 21st century.
  • Award to the best communications submitted by young research staff (SEE-CIBERESP). The purpose of this aid is to encourage and motivate participation of young researchers in scientific Public Health forums and to reward quality research in this field. These awards, which are managed by means of an Agreement that is renewed every year with the Sociedad Española de Epidemiologia (Spanish Epidemiology Society) (SEE), allow CIBERESP to reward the 10 best communications submitted by young researchers in the Annual Scientific Meeting of the SEE, held together with the Conference of the Portuguese Epidemiology Association, or in the Iberoamerican Epidemiology and Public Health (SESPAS/SEE) Conference. With the current format, this award includes a diploma and covers the awardee’s registration cost for the Meeting held the next year.

To improve visibility of another essential aspect of CIBERESP research training capability, a registry of the doctoral dissertations produced in the groups based on the information requested from them is being created, and it furthermore will gradually incorporate information about scientific production associated with it.

Most of the researchers associated with CIBERESP belong to institutions within the consortium that play a teaching role, generally offering a wide range of public health courses and training. Activities in this line of the training programme must seek a differential point that makes them complementary to one another and furthermore potentiates group interrelation. For this reason, ways to promote participation and implementation of training courses and activities for CIBERESP in collaboration with other CIBER subject areas, or training courses and activities that include the participation of a large number of CIBERESP groups (partial grants), will be investigated.

On the other hand, the transverse nature of the policy of promoting training for CIBERESP is also materialized in other aspects, such as giving priority to requests for competitive contracts for specialists that just finished training (Rio Hortega) or post-doctoral candidates (Sara Borrell, Miguel Servet, Juan de la Cierva, Ramón y Cajal).