This conference is kindly funded by the European Joint Programme for Rare Disease Netwroking Support Scheme. One of their objectives is to:
enable or increase participation of underrepresented countries in Europe in new and existing/expanding research networks on aniridia
These countries are generally small or eastern European:
Armenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey.
For patient, parents, healthcare professionals and researchers in these nations, we need the conference to:
- encourage sharing of knowledge
- support existing/new research networks to enable exchange of knowledge, (implications of) research results and innovative solutions
- strengthen the collaborations between different stakeholders to encourage future collaborative research efforts.
To do this we are exploiting the online aspect of confernece with
- wide appeal to people from underrepresented countries and early career scientists/doctors via social media and cascading messages through local organisations,
- free tickets
- way for lay people to ask questions and get explanations of technical language and concepts
- pre-recorded talks and live Q&A
- make more use of talent around the world, to help organise the event.
- a session for early career scientists in under-represented countries to present their work
- sessions aim at building stronger patient association in areas where they are lacking
- parallel networking room for discussing ideas and challenges with peers to kick start progressvirtual consultations
- prioritisation for online consultations
- recordings available afterwards
Please talk to us if you have any questions, ideas, or ways to help make this even better for those in under-represented countries.