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Background Papers
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Leading the initiative for strengthening Education, Training, Research and Communication in public health in India, PHFI commissioned eight Background Papers to key experts from around the world to write and present on diverse themes on public health, looking specifically at critical concerns in health systems. The working drafts of these papers were presented at the Conference in the Plenary Sessions between 12th and 14th of August 2008.
The objective of these Background Papers was to flag key themes and points for discussion in the Plenary. The key themes stressed by PHFI’s mandate resonate with global changes in thinking and practice engaging in a thrust on health systems connectivity and inter-disciplinarily in public health agenda.
Some of the salient themes that the Background Papers engaged with included:
- Analysis of current competencies and capacities in components of health systems.
- Planning and envisioning, particularly with regard to role of governing institutions.
- Inter-disciplinarity and roles played by different agencies, actors and stakeholders.
- Synergies and linkages in the different components of health systems.
- Role played by innovation and creative engagement in health systems.
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Public Health: Moving Beyond Definitional Debates to Consensus and Collective Action
Geoffrey Cannon, Director of Science and Policy, World Health Policy Forum
Why are some communities and populations sick and others well? How can public health be most rationally and reliably improved and sustained? Should material and human resources, which in recent decades have become increasingly diverted away from public goods, be mainly used for the benefit of the more affluent and productive middle-classes, or for all people? What is public health, as a concept, a discipline, and a way of being? This paper touches on such questions and suggests some responses.
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Configuring Public Health Education to Respond to the Challenge of Implementing Primary Health Care in Decentralized Health Systems
By: David Sanders, Director of School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
The Primary Health Care Approach (PHCA) evolved during the 1970s, responding to, but also influencing the basic needs approach to social development. 1 In developing the goal of Health for All by the Year 2000, the WHO and UNICEF2 elaborated this approach in the landmark Alma Ata Declaration of 1978 (see Box 1). Commitment to this strategy was fuelled by the perceived limitations of the basic health services
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Problem-solving in Public Health: Improving Connectivity between Health Systems and Public Health Education
By: Somsak Chunharas, Senior Advisor, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand
Public health refers to both the practices and studies of improving people’s health through diseases prevention and promoting health. C.E.A Winslow defined it as the sciences and arts of preventing diseases, prolonging life and promoting health through organized efforts and informed choices of societies, organizations, public and private, communities and individual
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Governance and Resourcing of Public Health: Recognizing the Role of Multiple Stakeholders
By: Devi Sridhar, Research Associate, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Global health is high on the international agenda of policy-makers, civil servants and philanthropists in low, middle and high-income countries. At the turn of the century, the Millennium Summit increased interest in global health with the creation of the Millennium Development Goals, which serve as the benchmark of international attention and finance
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Integrating Public Health Education across Different Levels and Categories of Health Personnel: Balancing the Need for Team-Building with the Need for Specialization
By: Laura Magana Valladares, Secretaria Academica, Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica, Mexico
“The extent to which we are able to improve the health of the public depends, in large part, upon the quality and preparedness of the public health workforce, which is in turn dependent upon the relevance and quality of its education and training.”
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Extending the Frontiers: Integrating Public Health Consciousness into Other Academic Programmes
By: Ravi Narayan, Community Health Advisor, SOCHARA,India
Over the last few decades the challenges of Public Health have grown. simultaneously the understanding of the framework of public health policy and action have also expanded from, an earlier bio-medical framework with a focus on disease control and environmental hygiene
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Evaluating New Models of Public Health Education: Indicators of Quality, Relevance and Impact on Health Systems
By: Mala Rao, Director, Indian Institute of Public Health – Hyderabad, India
Srinath Reddy has invited many leaders in public health thinking and practice from Asia and elsewhere to this auspicious conference in Hyderabad, in the centre of India, a great democratic nation whose influence in global affairs will increase during this century.
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