Thank You for Choosing Public Health Education: A Reminder to Students Why We Need You.

Applied public mental health: bridging the gap between evidence and clinical practice.

Artificial intelligence technology has become an important part of the development of Internet technology. Artificial intelligence technology can help colleges and universities optimize the network ideological and political teaching system. Artificial intelligence technology provides more accurate data resources and rich and reliable educational technology means for online public mental health education in colleges and universities. This paper comprehensively uses a variety of methods such as qualitative and quantitative analysis, case and empirical analysis, literature analysis, and artificial intelligence technology. Artificial intelligence technology has been closely integrated with online public mental health education in colleges and universities. The model systematically analyzes the optimization methods of artificial intelligence technology methods for the online public mental health education system in colleges and universities, and constructs an innovation system for online public mental health education in colleges and universities. Based on the comprehensive analysis of artificial intelligence and public health in colleges and universities, this paper further proposes the application of artificial intelligence technology in online public mental health education in colleges and universities. On this basis, the model conducts an in-depth analysis of artificial intelligence technology and the online public mental health innovation system. The model supports the development of ideological and political teaching in colleges and universities through various forms such as idea innovation, path innovation, carrier innovation, and mechanism innovation.

Digital Public Health stands for the integration and use of digital tools, automation, use of modelling and prediction, and personalisation and precision into public health services that build on improved access to health data and analytics. To capitalise on the opportunities that digital transformations offer to the mission of public health, the public health workforce needs education and training to develop the relevant digital competencies. With few exceptions, however, digital skills still need to become a routine part of public health training. Barriers to incorporating digital public health in public health training include uncertainty about what to teach, how to teach it, and who to teach it to. Firstly, digital competencies in public health are an evolving concept, making it challenging for education designers to make the necessary changes to public health curricula. Secondly, public health programmes already incorporate considerable subject matter, making the simple addition of content challenging. Finally, the rapid development of digital technologies requires us to find ways to develop closer collaboration with experts in information and communication technologies. Across Europe, experience in overcoming these barriers is emerging. This session will examine current developments in digital public health education and training and craft a roadmap for effectively including digital public health in public health training across Europe. The workshop will feature presentations of recent or ongoing research projects in which the speakers examine efforts to define a generic set of digital competencies for public health training in Europe. The presentations will include insights from a scoping review of international guidance on digital competencies for public health practice, two Delphi studies defining digital competencies for general public health education in Germany and in Europe, expert guidance for public health schools on integrating digital competencies into curricula, and a mapping of training experiences in a course on digital health literacy for public health professionals. An interactive discussion will follow, during which the presenters and participants will critically examine the emerging set of digital competencies for public health education and discuss potential next steps for implementation. Workshop participants will leave the workshop with an in-depth understanding of the current progress and outstanding challenges in incorporating digital competencies in public health education and training across Europe. Key messages • Digital competencies are a critical component of 21st-century public health, but uncertainty about what to teach, how to teach it, and to whom to teach it needs to be addressed. • This workshop will examine progress in defining digital competencies for public health and craft a roadmap for effectively including digital skills in public health training and education in Europe.

The public health workforce is transitioning significantly, with many experienced professionals retiring and an increasing demand for new competencies. Integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into public health education presents an innovative solution to address these challenges. AI provides opportunities for personalized learning, interdisciplinary collaboration, and scalable training, but AI introduces ethical challenges that must be addressed. Key regulations such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) are crucial in guiding the ethical use of AI in education and practice. AI can enhance public health education by fostering interprofessional learning and preparing a workforce capable of meeting evolving health challenges. Ethical considerations surrounding data privacy, bias, and regulatory compliance are examined. The importance of AI literacy for seasoned professionals is discussed, as they will be pivotal in mentoring the next generation of public health workers. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated technology adoption, making this an ideal time to integrate AI into public health education. Although AI offers valuable insights and tools, public health professionals must learn to assess AI outputs to ensure equitable and effective outcomes critically. A balanced approach to AI in public health education that combines technological innovation with ethical responsibility is needed for the field's advancement. Establishing guidelines and governance frameworks for AI integration in public health education, promoting AI literacy in health education programs, ensuring data privacy and ethical use, and advocating for interprofessional partnerships to shape AI policies to support public health goals are critical.

With the global outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), public health has received unprecedented attention. The cultivation of emergency and compound professionals is the general trend through public health education. However, current public health education is limited to traditional teaching models that struggle to balance theory and practice. Fortunately, the development of artificial intelligence (AI) has entered the stage of intelligent cognition. The introduction of AI in education has opened a new era of computer-assisted education, which brought new possibilities for teaching and learning in public health education. AI-based on big data not only provides abundant resources for public health research and management but also brings convenience for students to obtain public health data and information, which is conducive to the construction of introductory professional courses for students. In this review, we elaborated on the current status and limitations of public health education, summarized the application of AI in public health practice, and further proposed a framework for how to integrate AI into public health education curriculum. With the rapid technological advancements, we believe that AI will revolutionize the education paradigm of public health and help respond to public health emergencies.

Undergraduate education for public health has grown rapidly in the last decade since the Institute of Medicine recommended that “…all undergraduates should have access to education in public health.” Despite the growth of undergraduate education for public health in 4-year institutions, public health education in community colleges is at an early stage of development. In a comprehensive 2011–12 web-based catalog search of community colleges, only seven associate degree programs in public health or related fields could be identified (1, 2). Public health organizations are encouraging growth of education for public health in community colleges as well as 4-year colleges. The American Public Health Association has endorsed undergraduate public health education at both community colleges and 4-year colleges (3). Healthy People 2020 includes objectives to substantially increase the number of community colleges as well as 4-year institutions offering undergraduate public health education (4). As part of the Framing the Future Task Force, convened by the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health, the Community Colleges and Public Health (CC&PH) project, has been developed and co-sponsored by the League for Innovation in the Community College (the League), which represents over 800 of the 1100 community colleges. The CC&PH is co-chaired by the two authors of this article. The mission of the CC&PH project is to fully include community colleges in the continuum of public health education. The Community Colleges and Public Health Report (5) is expected to be a component of the final report of the Framing the Future Task Force (6). The CC&PH project has included two phases, a first phase consisting of an Expert Panel, which developed a series of Foundation and Consensus Statements that reflected what public health and community college educational organizations could do together (5). The second phase, recommended by the Expert Panel, focused on development of “prototype curricular models” designed for associate degrees and academic certificate programs in community colleges. Two basic models, (1) Public Health: Generalist and Specialization and (2) Health Navigator,1 were chosen after consultations with community colleges, project and Task Force leadership, and public health practice organizations (ASTHO and NACCHO), as well as academic associations in disciplines, which offer related bachelor’s degree programs (SOPHE, AUPHA, and AEHAP2). The CC&PH report recommends that Public Health associate degrees should be built on fundamental skills including writing, oral communications, and quantitative skills consistent with the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) LEAP initiative (7) and VALUE Rubrics (8). Associate degrees and academic certificate programs are also encouraged to incorporate ASPPH Undergraduate Public Health Learning Outcomes. (9). The Community Colleges and Public Health Project report recommends academic programs in Public Health: Generalist and Specializations designed for transfer to bachelor’s degree programs in general public health, health education, health administration, or environmental health. It also recommends Health Navigator academic certificate and associate degree programs. The CC&PH report also recommends specific courses and provides recommended content outlines: http://www.league.org/league/projects/ccph/. The remainder of this article summarizes the two prototype curricular models and discusses next steps in implementation.

Framing the Future: Exploring Inter-Professional Education and Practice in an Undergraduate Course

Background: One Health refers to the dynamic interdependence of human, animal and environmental health and provides a unique lens through which to examine health problems. Purpose: The purposes of this manuscript were (1) to contextualize One Health in public health and health education, (2) provide examples of a One Health approach to communicable and chronic disease, and (3) explain how One Health interfaces with the NCHEC Areas of Responsibility. Model: One Health involves combining human, animal and environmental components to address global health challenges that have an ecological interconnectedness and plays a role in promoting public health and health education. While One Health has technically been practiced by some public health, veterinary and medical professionals for many years, it is now becoming more recognized and institutionalized. Both public health and health education programs are in ideal position to integrate a One Health approach into their educational programs. Discussion: One Health can be integrated into public health and health education professional preparation courses including practicum and capstone courses. This article both provides a background to contextualize One Health as it relates to public health and health education and presents two examples, one from a Master of Public Health (MPH) program and one from a Global Health Certificate program from Virginia and how One Health interfaces with the NCHEC Areas of Responsibility.

The purpose of this study was to investigate Chinese pre-service kindergarten teachers’ beliefs and behaviors inherent to a public health perspective in the time of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The study intended to deepen our understanding of the contextual factors that may influence their future implementation of public health education in early childhood settings. Forty-five participants were recruited from an early childhood teacher education program, with the majority (n = 41) reporting that they lived through the strict restrictions in different regions of China during the initial COVID-19 outbreak. Data were collected via a reflective writing task from an online course. The results indicated an increasing awareness of public health among the participants due to the COVID-19 crisis. Their personal hygiene behaviors included personal protection, cleaning, disinfection, physical distancing, avoidance, and ventilation. The pandemic also changed pre-service teachers’ beliefs about the importance of public health education. Although the participants seemed to have positive attitudes toward public health education, evidence of their limitations of knowledge and skills was further exposed in their ideas for teaching health-related topics. When there is a need to strengthen public health education in the ongoing fight against COVID-19, this paper calls for a refocus in pre-service teacher education to improve public health outcomes for young children.

Interprofessional education involves programs that foster the partnerships of two or more individuals studying different health professions, thus allowing students to learn with and about the other professions. The Interprofessional Education Collaborative Competencies were updated in 2016 with a threefold purpose that included a greater emphasis on population health, thereby encouraging the health professions who typically work on an individual level to broaden their understanding of the field of public health. In the professional preparation of public health professionals and health education specialists, both foundational competencies and areas of responsibility imply and/or explicitly state that public health professionals and health education specialists must be able to work with interprofessional teams. Interprofessional collaborative learning activities have been recommended to be offered early and often during health professions training. Not only do public health and health education students benefit from inclusion in these interprofessional education activities but other health professions students also benefit from exposure to public health students and population health concepts. Public health and health education have contributed to leadership in interprofessional education initiatives and are well-situated to lend population health expertise to improve health care delivery as well as population and patient health outcomes.

Public health education is experiencing record growth and transformation. The current emphasis on learning outcomes necessitates attention to creating and evaluating the best curricula and learning methods for helping public health students develop public health competencies. Schools and programs of public health would benefit from active engagement in pedagogical research and additional platforms to support dissemination and implementation of educational research findings. We reviewed current avenues for sharing public health educational research, curricula, and best teaching practices; we identified useful models from other health professions; and we offered suggestions for how the field of public health education can develop communities of learning devoted to supporting pedagogy. Our goal was to help advance an agenda of innovative evidence-based public health education, enabling schools and programs of public health to evaluate and measure success in meeting the current and future needs of the public health profession.

There has been a significant increase in the use of e-learning for global and public health education recently, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic. e-Learning holds the potential to offer equal opportunities, overcoming barriers like physical limitations and training costs. However, its effectiveness remains debated, with institutions unprepared for the sudden shift during the pandemic. To effectively evaluate the outcomes of e-learning, a standardized and rigorous approach is necessary. However, the existing literature on this subject often lacks standardized assessment tools and theoretical foundations, leading to ambiguity in the evaluation process. Consequently, it becomes imperative to identify a clear theoretical foundation and practical approach for evaluating global and public health e-learning outcomes. This protocol for a scoping review aims to map the state of e-learning evaluation in global and public health education to determine the existing theoretical evaluation frameworks, methods, tools, and domains and the gaps in research and practice. The scoping review will be conducted following the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews) guidelines. The initial search was performed in PubMed, Education Resource Information Center, Web of Science, and Scopus to identify peer-reviewed articles that report on the use of evaluation and assessment for e-learning training. The search strings combined the concepts of e-learning, public health, and health science education, along with evaluation and frameworks. After the initial search, a screening process will be carried out to determine the relevance of the identified studies to the research question. Data related to the characteristics of the included studies, the characteristics of the e-learning technology used in the studies, and the study outcomes will be extracted from the eligible articles. The extracted data will then undergo a structured, descriptive, quantitative, and qualitative content analysis to synthesize the information from the selected studies. Initial database searches yielded a total of 980 results. Duplicates have been removed, and title and abstract screening of the 805 remaining extracted articles are underway. Quantitative and qualitative findings from the reviewed articles will be presented to answer the study objective. This scoping review will provide global and public health educators with a comprehensive overview of the current state of e-learning evaluation. By identifying existing e-learning frameworks and tools, the findings will offer valuable guidance for further advancements in global and public health e-learning evaluation. The study will also enable the creation of a comprehensive, evidence-based e-learning evaluation framework and tools, which will improve the quality and accountability of global health and public health education. Ultimately, this will contribute to better health outcomes. DERR1-10.2196/49955.

BackgroundDeveloping public health educational programs that provide workers prepared to adequately respond to health system challenges is an historical dilemma. In India, the focus on public health education has been mounting in recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic is a harbinger of the increasing complexities surrounding public health challenges and the overdue need to progress public health education around the world. This paper aims to explore strengths and challenges of public health educational institutions in India, and elucidate unique opportunities to emerge as a global leader in reform.MethodsTo capture the landscape of public health training in India, we initiated a web-based desk review of available offerings and categorized by key descriptors and program qualities. We then undertook a series of in-depth interviews with representatives from a purposively sample of institutions and performed a qualitative SWOT analysis.ResultsWe found that public health education exists in many formats in India. Although Master of Public Health (MPH) and similar programs are still the most common type of public health training outside of community medicine programs, other postgraduate pathways exist including diplomas, PhDs, certificates and executive trainings. The strengths of public health education institutions include research capacities, financial accessibility, and innovation, yet there is a need to improve collaborations and harmonize training with well-defined career pathways. Growing attention to the sector, improved technologies and community engagement all hold exciting potential for public health education, while externally held misconceptions can threaten institutional efficacy and potential.ConclusionsThe timely need for and attention to public health education in India present a critical juncture for meaningful reform. India may also be well-situated to contextualize and scale the types of trainings needed to address complex challenges and serve as a model for other countries and the world.

This conceptual research explores the transformative potential of digital learning platforms in the realm of behaviour change communication within the context of public health education. With the rapid advancement of digital technology, the traditional methods of health communication are being reimagined, offering new opportunities and challenges for promoting healthier behaviours and lifestyles. The research seeks to understand the evolving landscape of digital learning platforms and their integration into public health education programs. It investigates how these platforms can be leveraged to design and disseminate behaviour change communication interventions effectively. The study examines the theoretical foundations that underpin behaviour change communication and the ways in which digital learning platforms can enhance these foundations. Furthermore, the research addresses the critical issue of accessibility and inclusivity, as digital platforms have the potential to bridge the gap between diverse populations in terms of health literacy, socio-economic status, and geographical location. By employing a conceptual framework that combines elements of health communication theory, pedagogy, and technology adoption models, this study aims to provide insights into the effective utilization of digital learning platforms for behaviour change communication. Findings indicate that the use of digital learning platforms has led to increase engagement in public health education. This exploration is expected to shed light on the potential of these platforms to drive positive health behaviour change among diverse populations and pave the way for more informed strategies in the field of public health education. Ultimately, this research aims to encourage further exploration and development of digital learning tools for behaviour change communication in public health, with the potential to make a significant impact on global health outcomes.

At the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000, the 191 Member States of the UN reaffirmed commitments to work towards a world in which elimination of poverty and sustainable development are the highest priorities. Governments, health development agencies, nongovernmental agencies and WHO are committed to an unprecedented global effort to work towards the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as their corporate mandates. Although significant progress has been made for most of the goals, the most recent evaluation indicates uneven achievements within and across countries.1 It is apparent that some countries in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa need to channel special efforts through multisectoral actions to achieve maternal and HIV/AIDS mortality, and underweight targets. Poor health taxes productivity and undermines poverty reduction efforts. Given the MDG stakes, international evidence indicates that low-cost, effective interventions do exist2 but countries in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa have failed to scale up these interventions to address the significant burden of diseases. Failure to scale up cost-effective interventions is the result of fragile health system capacity, lack of political commitment and weak public health capacity. Public health education and competency at various levels are needed to translate evidence into policy, and to implement and evaluate programmes.3 In addition to the public health aspects of the MDGs, the emergence of new infectious diseases, and multidrug and extensive drug resistance pose serious demands for scaling up surveillance as a key public health competency,4,5 especially in the light of avian influenza threat and implementation of the International Health Regulations (2005). The countries around the Asia Pacific rim are perceived as the potential epicentre of future influenza pandemics. A review of public health education in the WHO South-East Asia Region6 in 2005 showed mixed results. Despite the existence of several postgraduate courses in India, Indonesia and Thailand, and undergraduate courses in other countries, there is a great variation in institutes and courses offered in the region. Challenges include quality assurance, teaching standards and faculty members’ competency in practical field experience, especially in public health management and outbreak control. The absence of policy-relevant research or publication of staff in public health faculties indicates the weakness of public health education and its dissociation with real-life public health policies and practices.7 At a political level, it is doubtful that those in senior policy-making positions are competent in public health. Yet these are leaders who will play a vital role in stewardship of health systems and in translating evidence into policy and programme implementation. However, there are some positive developments in this bleak situation. In Australia, public health competencies are fostered by on-the-job in-service training, context-specific continuing education programmes and short courses, distance and self-directed learning packages, and postgraduate university-level courses.8 Experience of Field Epidemiology Training Programmes (FETPs) is worth mentioning. By 2007, 34 countries had established FETP programmes. FETP in Thailand,9 established in 1980, has applied the concept of “linking education and practice” in its programme which has recently developed into a training course for other countries in the region. Trainees spend 25% of their time in the classroom and 75% in the field and “learning by doing”. For example, they conduct outbreak investigation and control. They have become the backbone of epidemiological surveillance and broader public health responses in Thailand. The programme was a key player in the Ministry of Public Health in response to both the outbreak of SARS in 2003 and to AIDS epidemics. More recently, FETP trainees and graduates were able to detect several new avian influenza cases through the review of clinical signs and symptoms, which were subsequently confirmed by reference laboratories. In response to avian influenza threats, the programme played a vital role in coordinating 1070 surveillance and rapid response teams nationwide, which was triple the number of national and international trainees. Public health education that is irrelevant to national health priorities and divorced from public health practice is useless and constitutes a lost opportunity. Given the MDG stakes, challenges of re-emerging infectious diseases and the increasing complexity of chronic non-communicable diseases, it is the right time to revisit public health education. A regional network such as the South-East Asia Public Health Initiative can serve as a platform for public health education reform.6 ■