Positioning Africa’s public health doctoral students to lead societal transformation and development

Abstract

The public health context is becoming increasingly more complex requiring highly trained professionals equipped with knowledge, competencies and tools to address or transform current and future challenges. Doctoral degree training offers an opportunity to build the capacity to detect and respond to such dynamic health challenges. In this paper, we discuss how Africa’s public health doctoral students can be better positioned for the different career pathways to provide leadership on complex health and development challenges. Public health PhD graduates can take up careers in academia, civil service, private sector and civil society, among others. To thrive in these pathways, PhD training should equip them with knowledge, skills and competencies in leadership, creativity and social competence among others. To produce career-ready PhD graduates, there is need to rethink training curricula to build critical skills for diverse career pathways, introduce students to entrepreneurship, and enhance linkages between universities and industry. Experiential learning, exposure to networks and partnerships, postdoctoral programmes and mentorship and exchange programmes can further equip PhD students with key knowledge, skills and competencies. For students to position themselves for the different careers, they ought to plan their careers early, albeit with flexibility. Students should build their soft skills and embrace technology among other transferable competencies. By identifying potential career pathways and being positioned for these early, Africa can produce transformative PhD students on a path for success not just for themselves but for society at large, including in new environments such as that created by COVID-19.

Emergency medicine doctoral education in Africa: a scoping review of the published literature

“…Replicating practices of high-income countries and successful universities is not desired, or feasible in many cases. The traditional apprenticeship model may not be efficient for the purpose of rapidly increasing the production of high-impact doctoral graduates in the African countries [ 14 , 33 ].…”

Competencies for Transformational Leadership in Public Health—An International Delphi Consensus Study

“…Researchers should seek to define value ranges for the individual stages of each competency and refine its descriptors, they should also determine the importance and relevance of single competencies in various contexts. Then the next group of researchers can determine which curricular elements (e.g., experiential learning, access to networks and partnerships, mentorship, replacement programs) most successfully support students in obtaining the necessary tools, competencies, and know-how to meet challenges in their work as transformational leaders [ 6 , 12 ].…”

“…Context sensitivity and specificity is of overriding relevance, especially in countries where educators seek to stem the outmigration of graduates in the health professions [1,6,7,40,41]. To successfully develop transformational leaders, educators must teach students how to adapt their current knowledge to use in a new ecosystem [18,[42][43][44].…”

“…They take a whole-system view, deal well with uncertainty, stimulate reflection, and guide their teams to shape the future [ 4 , 5 ]. Their individual leadership qualities are supported by context-dependent qualities of different world regions, expanding the scope to a global dimension [ 6 , 7 ]. Transformational leaders in public health may emerge naturally, but it should also be possible to train them with different educational approaches that focus on acquiring competency-specific behaviors to improve public health leadership across a wide range of positions, environments, and contexts [ 8 – 10 ].…”

The future of public health doctoral education in Africa: transforming higher education institutions to enhance research and practice

“…Cross-cutting competencies for public health are crucial, especially in a post-COVID-19 world. 16 , 17 …”