PHF/250514 - Development, integration, and delivery of ECDC fellowship competency-based content for leadership and communication in public health

The contractor will develop, integrate, and deliver competency-based leadership and communication training as part of the ECDC Fellowship programme. This framework contract aims to build leadership and communication capacity in future public health leaders through a coordinated, competency-driven approach. The ECDC Fellowship Programme is a two-year, training initiative with two paths (Field Epidemiology - EPIET, and Public Health Microbiology - EUPHEM). Its primary aim is to strengthen Europe’s public health workforce and enhance its capacity to respond to cross-border health threats. Throughout the programme, fellows develop technical skills in epidemiology and Public Health microbiology. Equally important is the development of leadership and communication skills during the programme. Strengthening these competencies will allow fellows to effectively lead teams, communicate findings, teach, and ultimately enhance Europe’s capacity in preventing and responding to cross-border health threats. Currently, leadership and communication training has been delivered as a one-off module, but there is a need for a more structured, integrated, and practice-oriented approach that spans the entire two-year fellowship programme. This contract addresses both immediate and long-term needs in leadership and communication development. It includes creating a structured leadership and communication training curriculum, integrating it into the fellowship’s activities, and delivering both standalone and embedded training sessions to ECDC fellows as well as fellowship programme faculty. In the short term, the contractor will deliver a “last time offered” face-to-face intensive 3-day immersive leadership and communication training in early September 2025. The target audience will be the current cohorts of fellows graduating in November 2025 and 2026 who have not yet benefited from this training during their programme. In the long term, the contract focuses on integrating leadership and communication competencies throughout the two-year fellowship curriculum for future cohorts, starting with the cohort starting the programme in September 2025. At the same time, training fellows and developing the Fellowship programme competencies in leadership and communication will also require that the fellowship faculty (e.g., frontline coordinators and supervisors of the fellows) develop within these competencies. The fellowship faculty is an integral part of delivering the training and also will facilitate understanding and support for the development of the fellows. The contractor will thus be asked to develop and deliver training in leadership and communication competencies to support the continuous professional development of the fellowship faculty. Finally, the contractor will provide all training materials in formats that ECDC can use and reuse. This newly developed leadership and communication training curriculum should cover subjects such as stress management, conflict resolution, project planning, team building, active listening, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), participative leadership practices, sustainability, societal change, emotional intelligence as well as new subjects identified as part of and during the contract. To identify additional leadership and communication skills for ECDC fellows, the contractor will review recent literature, competency frameworks, and past evaluations from training modules. The contractor will engage key stakeholders to confirm these needs and refine the training content through dialogue with ECDC staff. The value of the procedure is 135,000 EUR