Faculty of Public Health Medicine highlights evidence and policy impact at Winter Scientific Meeting

The Faculty of Public Health Medicine Winter Scientific Meeting, held on Wednesday, 3 December, showcased public health research, data-driven planning and evidence-informed policymaking. The meeting also marked the first event led by the faculty’s new Dean, Dr Kevin Kelleher, following the handover of office earlier in the week.

The annual meeting attracted a full house on site and strong participation online, bringing together public health professionals, researchers and policymakers from across Ireland to share emerging evidence, showcase new research and discuss the key issues shaping population health. The programme featured two keynote presentations alongside oral presentations and interactive live poster tours, providing attendees with the opportunity to engage directly with researchers and discuss their work.

Speaking at the meeting, Dr Kevin Kelleher paid tribute to outgoing Dean Professor Cecily Kelleher, describing it as “a privilege to have had Cecily as dean” and applauding “the enormous impact she has made during her four-year tenure.” Reflecting on the significance of the Winter Scientific Meeting, he added: “These meetings showcase what public health can do in changing things to improve the health of people and our communities.”

Professor Cecily Kelleher emphasised the central role of the faculty’s scientific meetings in maintaining excellence in public health practice. “The importance of the summer and winter meetings cannot be overstated. They are the core, the backbone of what we do,” she said. “They are when we set out the quality of our science, the applicability of it and today has been no less a case. Presentations drew on all domains of public health and on evidence-based practice and it is that quality that marks out our public health practice.”

One of the keynote addresses was delivered by Dr Aoife Brick, Senior Research Officer at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), whose research focuses on healthcare utilisation, system reform and workforce planning. In her presentation, Projecting future hospital demand and bed capacity requirements - national and regional projections from the Hippocrates model, Dr Brick outlined significant future capacity challenges, noting that by 2040 an additional 5,000 to 8,000 hospital beds will be required which is equivalent to approximately 350 beds per year over the next 17 years. She stressed the importance of addressing the drivers of emergency admissions, improving vaccine uptake and investing in other public health initiatives.

The second keynote speaker, Dr Zubair Kabir, Senior Lecturer in Public Health at University College Cork and Ireland’s National Lead on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study, delivered a presentation entitled Harnessing Burden of Disease Data – building a foundation for public health policy making in Ireland. Dr Kabir outlined the strengths of GBD data, noting its comprehensiveness, comparability and flexibility, alongside its value for benchmarking, surveillance, forecasting, and research and innovation.

He called for greater use of GBD data in policymaking, stating: “We need to move away from using GBD estimates as an academic tool to a critical resource for generating evidence to inform policymaking because of its robust scientific evidence.” Attendees noted that GBD data has become one of the most effective advocacy tools for communicating public health priorities.

The Winter Scientific Meeting also featured a wide range of oral presentations and live poster tours, showcasing research from across all domains of public health and reinforcing the importance of translating high-quality evidence into policy and practice.

The meeting marked both a strong conclusion to Professor Cecily Kelleher’s tenure as Dean and a new chapter under Dr Kevin Kelleher’s leadership highlighting the faculty’s continued commitment to scientific excellence and population health.

Winners

Long orals:

• 1st place: Ellen Cosgrave - “Suboptimal adherence to periconceptional folic acid supplementation in Ireland: A retrospective analysis of 66,690 pregnancies (2014-2022)”
• 2nd place: Niamh Bambury - “Barriers to efficient patient care and safe discharge in acute hospitals at the weekend in the HSE South West”

Short orals:

• 1st place: AnneMarie Murray - “Predictors of women’s intentions towards human papilloma virus self-sampling in Ireland”
• 2nd place: Grainne Larkin - Decolonisation of chronic VTEC shedding with antibiotic therapy – a case series”
• 3rd place: Sinead O' Riordan - “Evaluation of the South-East EUROCAT Registry of Congenital Anomalies 2011-2022”

Posters: 

• 1st place: Aine Varley - "Economic Evaluation of Early Talk Boost: A Targeted Intervention for Preschool-Aged Children with Language Delay in Ireland”
• 2nd place: Sydney Harper -“Care journey mapping of children and young people with a disability in the Mid-West: an engagement study with service providers”
• 3rd place: Tessa O’Gorman - “Pioneering perspectives on the Age Friendly Health System 4Ms Framework: Multidisciplinary insights from three early adopter sites in Ireland”

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