We are pleased to announce that the Fifth EMPHNET Regional Conference will be held in Marrakech, Morocco at the Palm Plaza Hotel December 6 - 8, 2016. With the central theme of Regional Contributions to Global Health Development, the conference will address efforts in improving health conditions in developing and emergency-affected countries throughout the region and how these efforts are being recognized and implemented globally. By affirming itself as a leading public health network in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR), EMPHNET has collaborated with many experts from across the region to help overcome many common health challenges of our time. As a result, the conference will focus on the challenges, strategies, and innovations typical to the EMR which is broadly characterized by devastating and severe situations. These include the high burden of NCDs, outbreaks of communicable diseases, emerging and re-emerging infections, weak surveillance systems, public health threats in mass gatherings, risks to biosecurity, and emergencies resulting from political conflict. The conference sessions are designed to provide opportunities for information exchange regarding critical and cross-cutting issues that jeopardize and hinder global health development. The conference will also offer a platform to showcase the scientifically grounded work of Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP) residents and graduates, and other public health professionals. More specifically, the conference aims to achieve the following objectives: Offer the opportunity for public health professionals from EMR to present their accomplishments and contributions. Engage members of the public health workforce from different entities in producing recommendations in response to regional and global health concerns. Encourage the exchange of ideas and sharing of experiences among public health stakeholders to leverage regional coordination and global health development. Within these objectives, the conference presents an agenda that includes keynote addresses, panel discussions, mini-symposiums, oral and poster presentations, roundtable meetings, and other pre-conference workshops. Roundtable sessions will tackle issues related to networking, rapid response, leadership and management, global health security, biorisk management, and poliomyelitis. Pre-conference workshops will highlight concepts in the FETP pyramid line, biosafety and biosecurity, routine immunization, and innovative surveillance. Many of these sessions will be live-streamed to grant as many interested individuals as possible with the opportunity of virtual attendance. Because EMPHNET’s Fifth Regional Conference will be held in conjunction with the Mediterranean Program for Intervention Epidemiology Training’s (MediPIET) Second Annual Scientific Conference there will be a joint day of sessions taking place on December 6, 2016 at Hôtel Les Jardins de l'Agdal. This day will include joint activities between EMPHNET and MediPIET that will offer engagement opportunities for participants. We are proud to announce that we received a total of 303 abstracts from FETP residents, graduates, mentors, resident advisors, and other health professionals from 20 different countries. After an expert review process, we have accepted a total of 144 abstracts from 15 countries for oral and poster presentations. The accepted abstracts include a diverse range of topics related to cancer, hepatitis, human immune deficiency virus, maternal health, noncommunicable diseases, outbreak investigations, respiratory diseases, surveillance systems, vaccine-preventable diseases, and zoonotic and vector borne diseases. We gratefully acknowledge the support of all countries in the EMR as well as our partners and the host country Morocco. We look forward to seeing you in Marrakech this December!