Country Liaison

The Country Liaison Sub-Committee is the bridge between the EULAR|EMEUNET Committee and the Country Liaisons (CLs), which are our representatives at the national level.

Our objectives are:

1. To maintain an active CL network. Our Sub-Committee establishes fluid communication with CLs to support them on their tasks and receiving their feedback and try to put their proposals into practice. For this purpose, we send out periodic reminders and materials, organize regular Teleconferences, and are always available to give any required assistance.

2. To promote and disseminate EULAR | EMEUNET and its initiatives. By supporting our CLs we can reach young rheumatologists, researchers and allied professionals in every country and attract to become members and to participate in the activities we develop. Our CLs disseminate the information we send them among their colleagues in their country. They also develop national activities meant to increase the visibility and adherence to EMEUNET and report back on so we can boost their visibility through our website and Social Media channels. For assistance in this task, we produce and maintain a repository of materials that are constantly updated and with their help, we obtain translations to further increase the possibilities of reaching more potential new members.

3. To Increase the visibility of CLs and their actions. We give more visibility to the work of our CLs by posting them on our website, social media channels and our annual newsletter, where we also highlight their promotional activities and those who had an outstanding performance.

ACTIVITIES

Production and translation of advertising materials

Materials are constantly updated based on CLs feedback.
Flyers are translated into different languages with the help of CLs and members of the working group.
We are currently updating the materials with the new branding and migrating everything to the EMEUNET website.

Monthly newsletter. New HTML e-mail format

We prepare a monthly newsletter to be distributed to the CLs including their activities in different countries, current EULAR | EMEUNET initiatives and tips for keeping with their tasks

Website updating and some advertising

Periodically there are new CL appointments and we receive feedbacks from CL promotional activities that we post on our website.

We maintain an updated list and a map with all of our CLs to increase their visibility.

EMEUNET-Country Liaison Clinical Topics webinar Series

We organise a series of webinars on clinical topics that are moderated by one Country Liaision and a speaker from their Country.

Annual EULAR | EMEUNET newsletter in collaboration with the Newsletter SC

Every year, the CL newsletter is released.

In this newsletter, performed in alliance with the NLSC, all CLs are introduced, their work is acknowledged, and we introduce the ones with and outstanding work.

The Country Liaison Meeting at EULAR Congress

Since 2014, we organize every year the Country Liaison meeting during EULAR Congress. In 2022, we could finally go back to F2F meeting in Copenhagen after some years of online meetings. This a good opportunity for CLs to meet each other, share their work, discuss the difficulties they found for performing their task and propose new ideas to be held during the next year. We are looking forward to Copenhagen, hoping the meeting will be face-2-face again!

2021 Country Liaison Meeting

2022 Country Liaison Meeting

LEADER: Xabier Michelena Vegas

Xabier is a Rheumatology and Emergency Medicine consultant at Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, Barcelona, Spain. He also holds a visiting research fellow position at the Leeds Institute of Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Medicine (LIRMM), University of Leeds, United Kingdom. His main research interests are in the field of spondyloarthritis and applied artificial intelligence methods.