We are delighted to announce that we will be hosting a national conference on disease clusters, to take place Summer 2012 in the D.C. area.

This conference will provide an opportunity for scientists, public health professionals, and community activists interested in disease clusters to network with each other, learn of other viewpoints and ideas, and develop trust needed to work together to solve complex problems that lead to disease clusters.

Conference objectives

1. Information Sharing & Building the Base:
Share successful strategies and effective messaging and swap model policies. Show that early identification and rapid response to disease clusters is a powerful unifying force that can infuse and embrace what people are doing to prevent harm. Presenters from “fenceline communities” can tell compelling stories of how precaution can play a powerful role in local victories. Groups can share international, national, Canadian and U.S. state-level successful strategies for legislative or regulatory reform. Youth activists can talk about involving young people in our work. Can include people who are just starting to work on it to build the base.

2. Harmonize & Integrate:
Plenary sessions can emphasize the common underlying themes and goals of disease cluster investigations. They can also help harmonize us across approaches/issues/regions with an underlying goal being integration to pull out the commonalities of different approaches.

3. Issue or Multi-Issue Strategy Sessions:
Groups can strengthen or develop collaborative strategies on issue-specific or regional strategies, or cross-fertilize across issue areas.

4. Skills Trainings:
Provide trainings on community organizing, media advocacy, demystifying the technical aspects of environmental issues, and more.

5. Technical & Strategy Sessions:
Provide sessions to address roadblocks to cluster investigation and response, such as developing economic arguments, how to counter industry arguments, messaging, and more.

Volunteers Needed for Planning Committee

If you can help on the planning committee, please send an email to Terry Nordbrock (terry at clusteralliance.org) letting us know

1) your name and contact information;
2) a couple of lines about your background and how you became interested in disease clusters ; and
3) how you would like to help.