Abstract
SummaryPublic health technical expertise is of crucial importance to inform decision makers’ action in the field of health and its broader determinants. Improving education and training of public health professionals for both practice and research is the starting point to strengthen the role of public health so that current health challenges can be efficiently tackled. At the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER) Deans’ & Directors’ 2017 Annual Retreat, we presented the structure and management of public health training system in Italy, and we reported recent data on Italian public health specialists’ educational experience, employment opportunities and job satisfaction. Public health training in Italy is implemented in the context of the post-graduate medical education residency programme in Hygiene and Preventive Medicine, delivered by 34 University-based Schools of Public Health. We report relatively high employment rates across the county and wide spectrum of career opportunities for young public health specialists. However, job security is low and training expectations only partially met. We call upon other Schools of Public Health to scale up the survey within the broad ASPHER community in a shared and coordinated action of systematically collecting useful data that can inform the development of public health education and training models, their implementation and fruitful interaction with population health, health systems and services.
Highlights
SummaryPublic health technical expertise is of crucial importance to inform decision makers’ action in the field of health and its broader determinants
At the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER) Deans’ & Directors’ Annual Retreat hold on May 31–June 2, 2017, we presented the case of Italy, describing the Italian public health training model and reporting the findings of a recent survey we conducted to explore Italian public health specialists’ training experience, employment opportunities and job satisfaction
They felt they would have benefitted from a greater interaction with public health professionals during training, greater international exposure and deeper inter- and intra-School of Public Health (SPH) exchange with both faculty and peers (Fig. 2)
Summary
Public health technical expertise is of crucial importance to inform decision makers’ action in the field of health and its broader determinants. At the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER) Deans’ & Directors’ 2017 Annual Retreat, we presented the structure and management of public health training system in Italy, and we reported recent data on Italian public health specialists’ educational experience, employment opportunities and job satisfaction. The post-graduate medical residency in “Hygiene and Preventive Medicine” (School of Public Health—SPH on) is currently a 4-year training programme, delivered by University-based schools accredited jointly by the Italian Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health. Survey results on employment opportunities, job satisfaction and educational experience in public health Building up on previous surveys' findings and with the aim of collecting recent data useful to plan and implement improvements of public health training in Italy, we conducted a nationally representative cross-sectional study among PH residents who specialized in the last 2 years (between October 2014 and July 2016). As emerges from our survey, the large majority (37%) works in Hospitals’ Medical Directions, of which 20% in the public sector and 17% in INHS-accredited private
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