Educating the public health workforce.

The section “Public Health Education and Promotion” of the journal “Frontiers in Public Health” is the first initiative to focus specifically upon the pedagogy pertaining to the current and future public health workforce. In Health Professionals for a New Century, an international task force chaired by Harvard School of Public Health Dean Julio Frenk and Chinese Medical Board President Lincoln Chen examined education worldwide for medicine, nursing, and public health (1). They concluded that the field of public health has comparatively little literature about what, why, and how to teach. The implications challenge those educating the public health workforce to prove that we do think about what we teach, why we teach it, and how to teach effectively. Public Health Education and Promotion is a single section with two distinct components, bridged by the shared themes of (1) education of lay and professionals for effective public health practice, and (2) a need for a new vision to shape future changes. The mission of the Education component is to be a forum for discussions about the pedagogy relevant to the public health workforce. For shorthand, education to train the current and future public health workforce will be referred to as education for public health. The Promotion component will entertain articles pertaining to education about public health and new paradigms to promote public health at individual and community levels. Educating the public health workforce is a critical and timely issue. A workforce strong in both capability and capacity is essential to the functioning of the public health system (2). And, as with so many other contemporary issues, the world has gone global, and public health is global (3). International emergencies, from the spread of infectious diseases such as SARS and avian flu, to natural and manmade disasters, such as the tsunami in Japan and the resulting degeneration of its nuclear power facilities, leave little doubt that public health must be addressed at a global level. This then necessitates a world-wide workforce of well-trained public health professionals capable of working in concert across disciplines, customs, and languages. A well-educated public health workforce is one of the most notable challenges to achieving a healthy world. However, the World Health Organization, as well as many individual nations, project severe shortages in the public health workforce (4). The teaching of public health is more complicated than that of a single clinical discipline because public health is at once a discrete field and one that intersects with numerous others. Because public health is global and interdisciplinary, discussions about pedagogy must similarly engage representatives of multiple disciplines and geographic areas. The ultimate goal, of course, is to enhance the education of the current and future public health workforce to be effective in practicing public health around the globe. Trends in public health education enhance the significance of a world-wide discussion about pedagogy. The number of schools of public health has expanded markedly in recent years. India offers a dramatic example. Having had graduate training programs in public health through medical and health sciences schools for many years, India declared the need for distinct schools of public health. In 2006, India launched an initiative led by the Public Health Foundation of India to start five to seven new institutes of public health, as well as strengthen existing training programs and increase research capacity (5). In the United States (US), the number of accredited schools of public health expanded from 24 in 1988 to 50 by the end of 2012 (6, 7). Public health as an undergraduate major is burgeoning, from Australia to global on-line programs such as offered by Walden University (8, 9). The US-based Council on Education for Public Health will soon begin to offer accreditation for undergraduate programs (10). DrPH programs are springing up from Texas to the United Arab Emirates. This growth is impressive – but it also increases the need for communication and exchange about the education being offered. For the field to develop world-wide standards, common expectations of outcomes, criteria for cross-national recognition of educational credentials, and interprofessional engagement, serious attention to the underlying pedagogy is warranted. An on-line, open access, rapid publication journal is one way to facilitate such communication. A review of the literature pertaining to the pedagogy of education for public health is currently underway. An initial search of literature recorded in three major data bases produced nearly 700 citations for the period 2000–2012. Article topics cover a wide range of subjects, including education targeted at undergraduate, master's level, doctoral, and workforce audiences; international and global health; interprofessional education, with public health as itself an integrating discipline; competencies, curricula, evaluation, and innovative teaching techniques; cross-cultural competencies; and intersection of the public health workforce with the healthcare delivery workforce. At the same time that public health seeks to build its pedagogy, the field of education is evolving at the macro level. Competencies have replaced courses and curricula as the major forces shaping education. The methods of teaching are also changing as technology evolves and the younger generations want new methods to learn and demonstrate performance. In the field of public health, recognition is emerging of changes in education related to health promotion, from changing behavior of individuals to education aimed at changing the actions of communities. Not only must we educate the future public health workforce, we must help those already working in public health to stay current, think globally, and engage with new technology. We must train those working in the field how to teach others about public health with techniques that are evolving and content that is continuously changing. Clearly, educating the public health workforce is a complicated task, with many moving parts. Compiling evidence for what we know about effective teaching can facilitate better teaching, achieve more profound learning, and provide the assurance that those teaching others have the tools and the motivation to continue to advance the pedagogy as well as content of public health.