Abstract
The aim of this scoping review was to identify and characterize the recent literature pertaining to the education of the public health workforce worldwide. The importance of preparing a public health workforce with sufficient capacity and appropriate capabilities has been recognized by major organizations around the world (1). Champions for public health note that a suitably educated workforce is essential to the delivery of public health services, including emergency response to biological, manmade, and natural disasters, within countries and across the globe. No single repository offers a comprehensive compilation of who is teaching public health, to whom, and for what end. Moreover, no international consensus prevails on what higher education should entail or what pedagogy is optimal for providing the necessary education. Although health agencies, public or private, might project workforce needs, the higher level of education remains the sole responsibility of higher education institutions. The long-term goal of this study is to describe approaches to the education of the public health workforce around the world by identifying the peer-reviewed literature, published primarily by academicians involved in educating those who will perform public health functions. This paper reports on the first phase of the study: identifying and categorizing papers published in peer-reviewed literature between 2000 and 2015.
Highlights
The World Health Organization (WHO) has a defined list of activities necessary to effectively keep the public healthy, continue to improve population health, and reduce global inequalities [2]
The purpose of this study was to begin to build a basis for discussion about cross-national public health workforce education by identifying who is teaching what, where, and with what competency or learning objective framework
A scoping review can be of particular use when the topic has not yet been extensively reviewed or is of a complex or heterogeneous nature [22], which is appropriate for public health workforce issues
Summary
The World Health Organization (WHO) has a defined list of activities necessary to effectively keep the public healthy, continue to improve population health, and reduce global inequalities [2]. Recent recognition of the importance of the social determinants of health [6] has called even more attention to the need for comprehensive training of all those with primary or secondary public health roles. Preparing those who will promote the health of the public is challenged by the unresolved, if academic, controversy about whether public health is a distinct discipline or not [7]. A recent report by two universities in the United States
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