The Crimedim (Research and Training Center in Disaster Medicine, Humanitarian Assistance and Global Health) of the University of Eastern Piedmont and the ReGEDiM research center of the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels organize, from 13 to 27 May 2022, the residential phase of the XX edition of the European Master in Disaster Medicine (EMDM). The Master, which will see most of the didactic phases take place in the setting of Novarello (in Granozzo con Monticello), will be inaugurated today at 17:00 at the Perrone University Campus in Novara. The keynote speaker who was entrusted with the inaugural lecture of the 2022 edition is Professor Gregory Ciottone (MD), Director of the Disaster Medicine Division at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center of Harvard, who just this morning signed together with the UPO rector Gian Carlo Avanzi and to the director of CRIEMDIM, Professor Francesco Della Corte, a Memorandum of Understanding that formalizes the link between the University of Eastern Piedmont and Harvard Medical School in the field of teaching and research of excellence in the field of disaster medicine.
Over the past twenty years, the European Master in Disaster Medicine has become a national and international academic reference point for research, virtual and practical training and emergency management in the field of disaster medicine. The lessons will involve 32 master students from 25 different countries (complete list in the fact sheet), who will be able to count on the EMDM faculty made up of academic experts and professionals in the emergency management sector.
The full-scale maxi-emergency exercise, a real test bed for the knowledge acquired by the participants, will be held on the afternoon of Wednesday 25 May in Bellinzago Novarese (NO). Over 500 people will be involved under the organizational leadership of CRIMEDIM, including the committees of the Italian Red Cross and the territorial coordination of civil protection volunteers in the province of Novara, students of the School of Medicine, doctors and nurses, staff of the simulation center. and didactics for the SIMNOVA health professions of the UPO; Furthermore, as per tradition, the fundamental support of the 3rd “Milan” Health Department and the Transit Area Management Regiment (RSOM) of the Italian Army will be provided, which will set up a fully functional field hospital.
The simulation activity of health intervention in a large-scale emergency context is of vital importance for the educational path of students in Disaster Medicine but the activity itself also allows local emergency services to test the response capacity of our systems in case of disaster. After 2019, due to the pandemic and for reasons related to the extreme pressure to which health systems were subjected during the Covid19 emergency, it was not possible to organize an exercise of this magnitude, the largest of its kind in Italy. coordinated by a university research center.