TY - JOUR
T1 - Building global partnerships through shared curricula for an MPH programme in India and Sri Lanka
AU - Sathiakumar, Nalini
AU - Tipre, Meghan
AU - Wickremasinghe, Rajitha
AU - Bhat, Vinod
AU - Kadir, Muhammad Masood
AU - Coggon, David
AU - Pathemeswaran, Arunasalem
AU - Kamath, Ramachandra
AU - Arunkumar, G.
AU - Fatmi, Zafar
AU - Smith, Tamika L.
AU - Pattanshetty, Sanjay M.
AU - Delzell, Elizabeth
N1 - Funding Information:
UKe did not have similar problems. The programme was inbuilt into the Department of Community Medicine. Being a state funded University, UKe came under the purview of the University Grants Commission of the Ministry of Higher Education. As a norm, all the academic programmes including postgraduate courses are approved by the Standing Committee for Medical and Dental Sciences in the Ministry of Higher Education. The UKe MPH curricula including individual course syllabi and their competencies were reviewed and approved by the Standing Committee over a period of one year. While it took longer time to implement the MPH programme at UKe as compared to MAHE, the approval from the Ministry of Education and political buy-in by the Ministry of Health guarantees local ownership and active support for the programme. In Sri Lanka, post-graduate courses in public health were limited to physicians pursuing postgraduate degrees. Given the global trend in training in Public Health, UKe decided to broaden the scope of public health training to encompass a team approach that included all professions engaged in public health. Although we anticipated problems, we have found students with diverse backgrounds were able to study and work together with mutual understanding and much cooperation.
Funding Information:
The present work was supported by the University of Alabama at Birmingham International Training and Research in Environmental and Occupational Health program, [grant number 5 D43 TW05750], from the National Institutes of Health-Fogarty International Center (NIH-FIC).
Funding Information:
institutions of developed and developing countries, the sustainability and institutional capacity building of the programmes in developing countries suffer (WHO, 2013b). We aimed to address this gap in context of a research training programme in environmental and occupational health funded by the National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center (NIH-FIC), the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)-South Asia International Training and Research in Environmental and Occupational Health (ITREOH) programme (Principal Investigator, Sathiaku-mar, N). The ITREOH programme was implemented for more than a decade at three South Asian institutions: Aga Khan University (AKU) in Pakistan; Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) (Deemed to be University) in India; and University of Kelaniya (UKe) in Sri Lanka; the first two are premiere private institutions in their respective countries, and the third is a leading government institution.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2019/9/2
Y1 - 2019/9/2
N2 - Objective: To design and implement a locally relevant competency based MPH programme. Methods: The demand for trained public health professionals in South Asia is enormous and growing, which created a unique opportunity for a Fogarty International Center-funded University of Alabama at Birmingham-South Asia [Aga Khan University, Pakistan; Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India; and University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka] international research training in environmental and occupational health (ITREOH) programme. In 2009, a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree programme was designed using a combination of competencies developed by the Association of School of Public Health, the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Results: A competency based curriculum was developed with two specialty tracks in applied epidemiology and environmental and occupational health, emphasising applied practice and research. Conclusions: This is the most comprehensive skill-based MPH programme in the region, which positions each institution as a regional leader in public health training. The success of the programme has been amply demonstrated by placements of graduated MPH students in leadership roles in public, private and academic sectors within their countries.
AB - Objective: To design and implement a locally relevant competency based MPH programme. Methods: The demand for trained public health professionals in South Asia is enormous and growing, which created a unique opportunity for a Fogarty International Center-funded University of Alabama at Birmingham-South Asia [Aga Khan University, Pakistan; Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India; and University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka] international research training in environmental and occupational health (ITREOH) programme. In 2009, a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree programme was designed using a combination of competencies developed by the Association of School of Public Health, the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Results: A competency based curriculum was developed with two specialty tracks in applied epidemiology and environmental and occupational health, emphasising applied practice and research. Conclusions: This is the most comprehensive skill-based MPH programme in the region, which positions each institution as a regional leader in public health training. The success of the programme has been amply demonstrated by placements of graduated MPH students in leadership roles in public, private and academic sectors within their countries.
KW - India
KW - MPH programme
KW - Public Health
KW - Sri Lanka
KW - curriculum development
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85069510557&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/17441692.2019.1579850
DO - 10.1080/17441692.2019.1579850
M3 - Article
C2 - 30773110
AN - SCOPUS:85069510557
SN - 1744-1692
VL - 14
SP - 1360
EP - 1371
JO - Global Public Health
JF - Global Public Health
IS - 9
ER -
