Right: TEPHINET project manager Lesley Guyot (center, back row) visits FETP Bangladesh

Through a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), TEPHINET is responsible for providing support in the area of operations (which can include finance, human resources, procurement and/or logistics) to several field epidemiology training programs—including the FETP in Bangladesh.

From September 1-14, TEPHINET project manager Lesley Guyot, who oversees TEPHINET’s support to FETP Bangladesh, visited the program and met with staff, residents and implementing partners to get feedback to ensure that TEPHINET is on track with the level and quality of support it provides the program.

“It was an honor to meet our partners again and see that the program continues to produce highly skilled field epidemiologists,” says Guyot.

While in Dhaka, Guyot had the opportunity to observe a pilot case study development workshop facilitated by technical experts from the CDC and FETP Bangladesh graduates. Workshop participants developed three case studies on outbreak investigation and other topics for use as training materials for future residents.

“For me, the workshop highlighted the importance of adapting case studies to the local context in order to be effective as teaching tools,” says Guyot.

FETP Bangladesh began in 2013 as a collaborative initiative between the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) in Dhaka and the CDC. To date, the program has graduated ten residents through the first two cohorts of its advanced level training and 115 doctors and veterinary surgeons through its two-month FETP Frontline course, which was implemented in 2016.