Over the past years, Tunisia has experienced important reforms in the field of public health. The Tunisian medical faculties (Universities of Sfax, Tunis el Manar, Sousse and Monastir) play a key role in this endeavor by training public health professionals who can contribute to the modernization of the health system. Funded by the EC through Erasmus+ programme, the CONFIDE project (coordinated by Babes-Bolyai University, having as EU partners the Universities of Southern Denmark and Trnava, and the above mentioned Tunisian universities) has established the Research into Policy training programme by strengthening their capacity to provide public health training. The Research into Policy training programme has been delivered by the Centres for Evidence into Health Policy (C4EHPs) established within the Tunisian partner universities for the needs of CONFIDE. The training programme was implemented in four steps: (1) train the trainer sessions - the European experts trained 18 Tunisian trainers; (2) shadowing sessions - the trainers participated in shadowing sessions in the European partner institutions; (3) training delivery - the CONFIDE trainers, assisted by the European experts, delivered the training to an interdisciplinary group of 25 students and professionals; (4) internships - the students participated in internships in local health institutions. Three modules have been built within the Research into Policy training programme: Public health research, Health promotion policies and Evidence based public health policy. They contributed to increasing the public health knowledge and skills of the professionals trained. The training programme was well received by the Tunisian universities and the material developed so far during the project was adapted to the Tunisian context in the third step of implementation. On the long term, the project is expected to have an impact at the national level and produce updates at curricula level in the Tunisian medical faculties. Key messages Research into Policy training programme developed by the EC partners and culturally adapted by the Tunisian partners to the Tunisian public health context. Research into Policy training is a well-received tool for the high quality learning process in the public health field in Tunisian medical faculties.

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Introduction Over the past 15 years, Tunisia has experienced considerable development in the political and economic areas. In this context, important reforms in the field of public health have been made, with the Tunisian universities (University of Sfax, University of Tunis el Manar, University of Sousse) on their way to educate the public health professionals who can contribute to the modernization of the health system. Funded by the EC through Erasmus+ programme, the CONFIDE project (coordinated by Babes-Bolyai University, having European partners the Southern Denmark University and Trnava University) has 3 major objectives: develop Centres for Evidence into Health Policy (C4EHPs) designed to ease future collaborations; strengthen institutional capacity to deliver state-of-the-art research into policy training program; consolidate national and local partnerships between the public health academic and non-academic sector. The progress The partners have jointly contributed to the following activities: development of the Centre for Evidence into Public Health Policy, 3 train-the-trainer sessions, 9 train-the-trainees sessions, internships for trainees, one policy game. To this date, 18 trainers have been trained by European partner universities and they trained 29 Tunisian trainees in the field of public health research, health promotion and evidence-based public health policy. The trainees will participate in internships in local and regional health institutions, to practice what they have learned. A policy game will be organized, to simulate collaboration between researchers and policy makers, for public health policy elaboration. Conclusions The Research into Policy training program has been implemented in all 3 Tunisian partner universities. The expected long-term changes are: young workforce trained into public health and evidence-based policies fields; university curricula modifications by introducing public health courses and developing of Masters of Public Health.