Public health educational comprehensiveness: The strategic rationale in establishing networks among schools of public health

Robert Otok, Katarzyna Czabanowska, Anders Foldspang*

*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

The establishment and continuing development of a sufficient and competent public health workforce is fundamental for the planning, implementation, evaluation, effect and ethical validity of public health strategies and policies and, thus, for the development of the population's health and the cost-effectiveness of health and public health systems and interventions. Professional public health strategy-making demands a background of a comprehensive multi-disciplinary curriculum including mutually, dynamically coherent competences - not least, competences in sociology and other behavioural sciences and their interaction with, for example, epidemiology, biostatistics, qualitative methods and health promotion and disease prevention. The size of schools and university departments of public health varies, and smaller entities may run into problems if seeking to meet the comprehensive curriculum challenge entirely by use of in-house resources. This commentary discusses the relevance and strength of establishing comprehensive curriculum development networks between schools and university departments of public health, as one means to meet the comprehensiveness challenge. This commentary attempts to consider a two-stage strategy to develop complete curricula at the bachelor and master's as well as PhD levels.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)720-722
Number of pages3
JournalScandinavian Journal of Public Health
Volume45
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2017

Keywords

  • Public health workforce
  • public health human resources
  • public health education
  • public health competences
  • public health profession
  • sociology
  • behavioural sciences

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