Peoples-uni: Developing public health competences -- Lessons from a pilot course module

Abstract

The People's Open Access Educational Initiative (Peoples-uni) aims to contribute towards public health capacity building in Developing Countries, through the provision of on-line education for public health practitioners. It is intended that this provision be of high quality, but low cost, and will utilise the diverse array of Open Educational Resources which are available. A key requirement for this is to identify appropriate public health competences that will need to be met through a Diploma/Masters level programme of education that is relevant and up-to-date, enabling practitioners to further develop their knowledge and skills. A pilot module on the subject of maternal mortality was delivered at the end of 2007. Competences to be met through this course, were dictated by the requirements for learning and building public health capacity. They were searched for in an array of resources ' course/training providers' aims and objectives and professional bodies' key requirements for their practitioners. However, these existing published competence lists were from Developed Countries, and required modification for problem-based learning and setting (i.e. Developing Countries). Generally positive experiences from the pilot course module suggest that developing an on-line, accredited Diploma in Public Health is not an impossible aim.