Promoting Public Health Workforce Training for Developing and Transitional Countries: Fifty-Year Experience of the Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Jerusalem, Israel

Abstract

The goal and responsibility of graduate institutions of public health is to educate and train the public health workforce to address the challenges of Health for All in the 21st century and meet the Millennium Development Goals. Over the past 50 years, the Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine in Jerusalem, Israel-through its international training activities including the International Master of Public Health (IMPH) program, PhD training, and short-term training workshops in Israel and abroad-has built a network of public health scholars in low-, transition-and high-income countries who benefit from academic expertise in Israel and transfer that expertise towards development efforts in their home communities. Given the number of IMPH graduates, the countries they come from, and the work they do upon their return, the IMPH has had real and sustainable impact on public health globally and in developing countries in particular.

Population health and status of epidemiology: WHO European Region I

“…In Turkey, public health departments provide MPH and/or PhD programmes through institutes of health sciences to medical and non-medical graduates, and public health departments in medical schools offer public health specialization programmes, equivalents of PhD programmes, to physicians. In Israel, the Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine, a benchmarking training institution hosting the region's only WHO Collaborating Centre for Capacity Building in Public Health and supplying the entire region with epidemiologists, 75 offers the International MPH to medical and non-medical graduates. In Turkmenistan, doctoral training in all fields of study, including epidemiology, was abolished in the mid-1990s as a consequence of political and economic turmoil, but re-established in 2007.…”

The Future Public Health Workforce in a Changing World: A Conceptual Framework for a European–Israeli Knowledge Transfer Project

“…To ensure the delivery of essential health services, the professional PHW requires up-todate theoretical knowledge alongside practical skills in a broad range of core competencies, especially considering the continuous evolution of the field [17,18]. The CHE Committee identified the need to balance traditional academic PH education with professional, practiceoriented training.…”

Editorial: Education for a Public Health Workforce in Europe and Globally

“…We include reviews of the past, present and future of public heath training in Europe 7-10 and the Americas, 11 with case studies from Canada, 12 the United Kingdom, 13 The Netherlands, 14 Chile, 15 Mexico, 16 Bulgaria 17 and Israel. 18 We examine competencies for public health from British and American perspectives, 19,20 the role of international donors in promoting schools of public health in Eastern Europe, 21 future issues in public health research, 22 the global efforts by the Centers for Disease Control to train field epidemiologists, 23 and programs preparing leaders in health systems management. 24 In a fascinating review, Bangdiwala and colleagues report on public health education in the world's most populous countries, India and China, 25 both of which have seen remarkable achievements over the past 60 years.…”

“…Consequently we have included a series of case reports, on topics such as the development of bachelor's and master's training programs at a new university in the UK 13 and at Maastricht University in The Netherlands 14 ; the global mentoring activities of experienced staff of the Braun School of Public Health in Jerusalem 18 ; and the challenges of adapting to public health education needs in Austria and Germany. 10 We can learn from how Canada reinvigorated its public health training after severe weaknesses were revealed by the SARS epidemic of 2003, with the strengthening of federal public health institutions and the creation of eight academic public health centres since 2006.…”