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Raymond Tweheyo, Christine Nalwadda, Nicholas Ayebazibwe, David Mukanga, Elizeus Rutebemberwa, William Bazeyo. Two decades of post-graduate training in applied public health: the experience and challenges of the Uganda Public Health School Without Walls. Pan Afr Med J. 2011;10(Supp 1):11 Key words: FETP, postgraduate, training, public health, fiel epidemiology, Uganda Permanent link: http://www.panafrican-med-journal.com/content/series/10/1/11/full Received: 21/11/2011 - Accepted: 15/12/2011 - Published: 15/12/2011 This article is published as part of the supplement "Field Epidemiology in Africa" Supplement sponsored by PAMJ and The African Field Epidemiology Network © Raymond Tweheyo et al. The Pan African Medical Journal - ISSN 1937-8688. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Two decades of post-graduate training in applied public health: the experience and challenges of the Uganda Public Health School Without Walls
Raymond Tweheyo1,&, Christine Nalwadda1, Nicholas Ayebazibwe2, David Mukanga2, Elizeus Rutebemberwa1, William Bazeyo1
1Makerere University School of Public Health, College of Health Sciences (MaKSPH), Uganda, 2African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET), Kampala, Uganda
&Corresponding authors
Raymond Tweheyo, Makerere University School of Public Health, College of Health Sciences (MaKSPH), Kampala, Uganda
The objective of this work is to describe the experience of the Uganda Public Health School Without Walls (PHSWOW) in training public health professionals at post-graduate level to offer leadership in planning, delivery of health services and research within a decentralized health system. As one of the constituents of the Makerere University College of Health Sciences, the Uganda PHSWOW has the vision of becoming a Centre of Excellence, providing leadership in public health and the mission of promoting the attainment of better health of the people in Uganda and beyond through public health training, research and community service. Key to the successes of the program are the 238 program graduates, most of whom have remained in-country to serve at district and national levels of service delivery. Collaborations have been established with government, private, non-governmental and international institutions leading to increased health service provision and research for the improvement of health status of populations and influence on public policy. There is still a lot to do in diversifying the skills mix of graduates and contributing to an ambitious increment from 0.4 to 4.7 public health professionals per 10,000 population; as is currently the case in high-middle income countries. Currently, the Uganda PHSWOW has exceeded the proposed output for FETPs of training 3 to 5 graduates per 1 million population suggested by some authors, however the output is still inadequate. More also needs to be done to promote a culture of publication in an effort to translate public health evidence into policy and practice.