{"word_count": 608, "character_count": 3869}
I'm extremely pleased that today sees the launch of our first blog post written by a member of the EUSPR Early Careers Forum. The piece was written by Dr Milica Vasiljevic, Research Associate at the Behaviour and Health Research Unit (BHRU), University of Cambridge, UK. Milica's experimental study on the potential impact of e-cigarette advertising on young people is very timely given the relative lack of research in this area. It won the 3rd SPAN Poster Prize at the EUSPR conference in Ljubljana in 2015 and was recently published in the journal Tobacco Control.What's next?Milica's blog post is the first in a series of posts by past winners of the EUSPR/SPAN awards for early-career preventionists. The next post (to be published on 22nd February) will be by Dr Dijana Jerković, Senior Expert Advisor at the Office for Combating Drugs Abuse of the Government of the Republic of Croatia. Dijana won the 2nd SPAN Poster Prize in 2015. If you've ever heard the phrase "bridging the gap between research, policy and practice", then know that few people will embody this like Dijana, who is a practitioner, policy-maker and researcher. Taking a personal perspective, Dijana will reflect on the specific challenges of trying to integrate multiple professional roles and identities.Boris Chapoton, Project manager at the Hygée Center for Cancer Prevention in France, will contribute to the blog in March. Boris was the overall winner of the EUSPR/SPAN Early Career Researcher Prize 2015 with a study analysing how drinking and smoking were portrayed in TV series most popular with French youth. In his contribution, Boris will provide more details on the study but reflect also on his own position in relation to his research.Beyond that, we've got many more interesting blog posts to look forward to, including (but not limited to): methodological posts exploring the practicalities of conducting randomised controlled trials (RCTs); reflections on the challenges of implementing prevention activities in the real world; research updates from people who presented their work at previous EUSPR conferences; and guest contributions from early-career colleagues in North America.Behind the scenesIn the lead-up to this first post, we had some discussion about the direction of this blog (see also our earlier post). We see the primary aim of this blog as providing a space where early-career preventionists can present themselves and their work. However, the blog can and should also offer a platform for discussing what it means to be an early-career preventionist, including the challenges and opportunities we face along the way. As such, we encourage contributors to write about what seems most important to them at the time, welcoming research-focussed contributions as well as more personal reflections.Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the Members of the EUSPR Early Careers Forum who kindly volunteered to contribute posts to this blog. I hope you find this experience useful and enriching. I would also like to thank my fellow editors Kimberley Hill, Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Northampton, UK, and Aniek van Herwaarden, Research Master’s Student at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, who will also be volunteering their time to review and upload blog posts. Last but not least, I wish to thank the Center for Doctoral Studies at the University of Vienna for organising a workshop on academic blogging for doctoral students, which inspired the creation of this blog.I hope you will enjoy reading Milica's first post and will come back for future posts.Angelina BrotherhoodEarly-careers lead for the European Society for Prevention Research (EUSPR)Doctoral student at the University of Vienna, AustriaP.S. For more information about the EUSPR Early Careers Forum, including information on how to join, please see here.