All colleagues with an interest in the psychological and social aspects of genetic counselling and genetic testing or in the psychosocial impact of genetic disease are invited to the 9th European Meeting on Psychosocial Aspects of Genetics in Munich. This EMPAG-meeting is held for the second time in conjunction with the European Conference for Human Genetics. The success of the EMPAG meeting in Strasbourg in 2002 with many new participants, also from outside Europe, was a major reason to continue the joint organisation.

The EMPAG-meeting in Munich offers an excellent and multifaceted programme to attract genetic counsellors, genetic associates, psychologists, social workers, medical sociologists, epidemiologists, genetic nurses, clinical geneticists and others with a particular attention in psychological and social aspects of genetics. The meeting will include plenary sessions, poster presentations with associated discussion sessions and workshops organised by the EMPAG scientific committee as well as sessions jointly organised by the ESHG/EMPAG committees. The scientific committee tries to achieve a good balance between research and practice and to provide sufficient time for interaction and discussion. Multidisciplinarity is a major characteristic of the meeting. Participants of the European Conference of Human Genetics are welcome in all EMPAG-sessions and EMPAG-participants have access to all ESHG-sessions.

We explicitly invite professionals involved in practice and research to submit abstracts for a wide range of psychosocial topics. We also stimulate the submission of abstracts and proposals for the organisation of workshops.

We hope to meet you in Munich for an exciting EMPAG-meeting!

Lauren Kerzin-Storrar and Gerry Evers-Kiebooms
Co-chairs of the EMPAG scientific committee