Public Health laboratories knowledge sharing webinars
The WHO Public Health laboratories knowledge sharing platform was launched in May 2020 to support COVID-19 reference laboratories facing challenges such as: establishing and transferring SARS-CoV-2 testing protocols, facing reagent shortages and managing the decentralization of testing.
The initiative quickly expanded to include a global audience of laboratory stakeholders. The primary tool used for knowledge sharing is regular webinars, the organization of which is coordinated by the WHO Public Health Laboratory Strengthening unit (Lyon office) together with WHO Regional Offices, with simultaneous interpretation in 6 languages (Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish). In 2022, followers of the webinar series have also benefitted from a broadened scope of practice, with sessions now being offered on other epidemic-prone diseases and health emergencies and cross-cutting laboratory topics.
Key objectives:
- Enhance WHO guidance and best practices dissemination by communicating with key laboratory stakeholders at country level
- Enhance knowledge sharing and peer-to-peer exchanges across laboratories globally
- Improve WHO's understanding of knowledge gaps and barriers to guidance and best practices implementation
Over 40 webinars organized since May 2020
The webinars were translated to Arabic, French, English, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese
Over 40 000 cumulated participants from 200 countries or territories
The participants were:
63% female
36% male
0.1% no-binary
1% preferer not to say
Over 900 questions were answered
Activities
WHO is grateful to the technical and financial partners who have helped to support and sustain this webinar series. Since June 2022 data about webinar participation is presented in a dashboard, created in partnership with Project ECHO™.