The Country Liaison Sub-Committee serves as a crucial link and bridge between the EULAR|EMEUNET Committee and the Country Liaisons (CLs), who act as our representatives at the national level. Our primary objectives are as follows:
- To establish and maintain an active CL network. The CL Sub-Committee ensures smooth communication with CLs, offering support for their tasks, actively seeking feedback, and striving to implement their proposals. We facilitate this through the timely distribution of reminders and materials, scheduling regular teleconferences, and maintaining constant availability to provide any needed assistance.
- To promote the activities and initiatives by EULAR|EMEUNET. Through our support to CLs, we aim to connect with young rheumatologists, researchers, and allied professionals worldwide, encouraging them to join and actively participate in our initiatives. CLs play a pivotal role in disseminating the information we provide within their national networks and among their local community of young rheumatologists. Additionally, they spearhead the development of national activities aimed at enhancing EMEUNET’s visibility and fostering adherence. CLs report back to us, enabling us to amplify their visibility through our website and social media channels. To aid in this mission, we maintain a regularly-updated repository of materials and are expanding our reach to potential new members.
- To encourage them to take an active role within EULAR|EMEUNET. We actively encourage and support CLs to play an integral role in EULAR|EMEUNET through ongoing initiatives. Additionally, we have exciting new events in the pipeline, providing further opportunities for CLs to actively contribute and shape the direction of our collaborative efforts.
- To Increase the visibility of CLs and their actions. We enhance the visibility of our CLs by featuring their work prominently on our website, social media channels, and annual newsletter. In these platforms, we not only showcase their achievements, but also highlight their promotional activities and recognise those who have demonstrated outstanding performance.
Activities
Website update and advertising
- Periodically, there are new CL appointments.
- We receive feedback from CL promotional activities that we post on our website.
- We maintain an updated list and a map of all of our CLs, to increase their visibility.
Annual EULAR|EMEUNET newsletter, in collaboration with the Newsletter Sub-Committee
- Every year, the CL newsletter is released.
- In this newsletter, performed in collaboration with the Newsletter Sub-Committee, all CLs are introduced, their work is acknowledged, and we introduce CLs who produce outstanding work.
Open to new projects proposed by the Country Liaisons
We are currently working on exciting new projects in the pipeline that will involve the CLs and the whole EMEUNET community, which will hopefully diminish the gap between our members and the Sub-Committee.
Contributing and supporting the promotional activities carried out by CLs in their local organisations
- Logistical support; delivering the official EMEUNET booth and promotional materials, including flyers, through the EULAR office.
- This collaborative effort aims to enhance the visibility of EMEUNET and its initiatives, fostering engagement at the local level.
- Materials are constantly updated, based on CLs feedback.
EMEUNET Country Liaison Clinical Topics Webinar Series
The ‘CL Topics Webinar Series’ is a specialised project that aims to facilitate in-depth discussions on clinical themes within rheumatology through engaging webinars featuring experts from diverse EULAR countries. Developed collaboratively by the EULAR|EMEUNET Country Liaison sub-committee and the EULAR Education Committee, the series is designed to foster knowledge-sharing and contribute to the professional development of rheumatologists. Country Liaisons (CLs) play a central role, not only moderating the webinars, but actively contributing to topic conceptualisation, inviting experts, and shaping the content. This initiative contributes active involvement of the CLs in initiatives of EULAR|EMEUNET.
The upcoming event calendar and previous webinar recordings are available free of charge at https://esor.eular.org
The Country Liaison Meeting at EULAR Congress
Since 2014, we have been organising the Country Liaison meeting annually during the EULAR Congress. This provides a valuable opportunity for CLs to connect, share their work, discuss challenges faced in their roles, and propose new ideas for the upcoming year. Unfortunately, in recent years, these meetings were held online due to the pandemic. However, as of the last two years, we have resumed conducting face-to-face meetings. We are very happy to perform a face-to-face meeting in Vienna, fostering even more meaningful interactions among our dedicated Country Liaisons.
Written by Ertrugul Cagri Bolek