The Future Public Health Workforce in a Changing World: A Conceptual Framework for a European-Israeli Knowledge Transfer Project.

Abstract

Health services quality and sustainability rely mainly on a qualified workforce. Adequately trained public health personnel protect and promote health, avert health disparities, and allow rapid response to health emergencies. Evaluations of the healthcare workforce typically focus on physicians and nurses in curative medical venues. Few have evaluated public health workforce capacity building or sought to identify gaps between the academic training of public health employees and the needs of the healthcare organizations in which they are employed. This project report describes the conceptual framework of “Sharing European Educational Experience in Public Health for Israel (SEEEPHI): harmonization, employability, leadership, and outreach”—a multinational Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education funded project. By sharing European educational experience and knowledge, the project aims to enhance professionalism and strengthen leadership aspects of the public health workforce in Israel to meet the needs of employers and the country. The project’s work packages, each jointly led by an Israeli and European institution, include field qualification analysis, mapping public health academic training programs, workforce adaptation, and building leadership capacity. In the era of global health changes, it is crucial to assess the capacity building of a well-qualified and competent workforce that enables providing good health services, reaching out to minorities, preventing health inequalities, and confronting emerging health challenges. We anticipate that the methods developed and the lessons learned within the Israeli context will be adaptable and adoptable by other countries through local and cultural adjustments.