Many talking points that seemed fringe or radical 12-months ago are no longer so. The mainstream media are taking a closer look at reparations, at economic inequality, and at restorative justice. Some political campaigns have made ‘Medicare for All’ a clarion call. For those of us who teach foundational public health courses especially at the community college level, do we need to re-design our courses to meet these historic moments? How do we articulate the vision for public health careers when much of this essential workforce is under-paid? Even as Covid-19 assert’s public health’s relevance, how might we continue to keep an eye on the toll chronic diseases have on our communities? What open education resources/texts have you found accessible to contextualize equality of opportunity vis a vis equality of outcomes for public health?
Equity is always necessary and more in the field of health, unusual situations such as COVID 19, what they do is accentuate these differences, and confirm that a more integrative vision of the different areas that make the person is needed.
At our university Universitas Indonesia starting March 18, 2020 all
lectures must use daring platform. So before the Pandemic not all
faculty using the daring method in delivering courses. But after the pandemic all courses by all faculty must be delivered using daring platform. So the newest thing is an obligation to use the method of teaching which is daring. Hope it is useful
Hadi
It depends on context. Distance learning through online is quite familiar.
As more students are drawn to public health as a field of study and a profession, bringing varied backgrounds and experiences with them, the number of public health programs and schools of public health has grown substantially.
Dear Dr. Nigel Thomas ,
This Project offer New Approach of Teaching/Learning of Public Health in Undergraduate Medical Education:
Presentation New Approach of Teaching/Learning of Public Health in Underg...
The importance of washing hands often is old, but has been stressed more now, so it is like new.
With the current pandemic situation it should be obvious that every program needs to expand/modify/improve their coverage of epidemics/pandemic situations. The recent movement in public health of "One Health" is an important part of this. Also - the pandemic has shown the critical need for public health planning and response as well as finding /developing ways to better educate the public so they can respond appropriately when there are needs such as quarantine imposed.
Dear John,
The platform at our university is: EMAS (own UI design), Microsoft Team and Google meet. Zoom is not officially offered at my work unless on my own initiative.
Hadi
topics of participatory methods, integrated sectors, digital methods are the ones come to my mind.
In our context (East Africa), teaching public health as in relation to application of Evidence + Data + Systems Thinking
Teaching public health represents a challenge for all health educators, as it includes a wide variety of important subjects that can be general, broad or specific and technical. Keeping students’ attention is a difficult task when introducing purely theoretical concepts or subjects that for some, can be obvious, but are the building blocks of public health practice. Pretending to create a “hands on effect” is not an easy task for any health educator. More so, if your students come from different backgrounds, as those interested in Public Health. This chapter intends to address aspects of public health, such as skill sets needed, using technology and strategies to teaching public health, as well as, mentoring students to generate action. Each section will include examples and proposed exercises for the teacher to use in the classroom.
The Foundation for Integral Health Care (NL) teaches a new form of public health awareness:
http://www.integralhealthcare.info/
In my opinion, the acceptance of the “health education” concept by the public is the new trend nowadays. The COVID-19 crisis has shown the importance of the health education to the public that was previously indifferent or thought that health education is bot efficient in changing behaviors...
I think the concept of "Demographic entrapment" by Maurice King in 1993 now is being reversed to "nature entrapment" in our challenging fragile environment where the public health is not only related to the ecosystem and its ‘connectedness’ to other ecosystems Article Demographic entrapment
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Hi Nigel,
This is a really nice question. I note that a number of people have given good answers. I would focus on the issue of making sure that the audience to whom the information is directed internalizes the information. In other words, the mere understanding is insufficient to fill the complete role of teaching public health. Aside from new methods (e.g., telemedicine), the focus should be on predictive modeling, representations of uncertainty that complement probability theory, new computing methods, and automated literature searches that go beyond meta-analysis. But, critically, it is the way we think that matters. Dealing with public health disasters as COVID-19 implies cascading catastrophes, namely complex interactions between science, human behaviors, economics, and so on. Complex problems often require complex answers: only after resolving the complexities, we can reduce complexity. Think of E = mc^2: there are fundamental changes in reasoning that explain this result. Without internalizing their implications (change of coordinates system, etc.) the formula itself is barren.
I hope that this helps; thank you for your question.
Paolo
What does "Medicare for all" mean? This is the duty of doctors and the human community since the time of Hippocrates. But officials are refreshing their speeches with „unheard“ of ideas until then. I agree with Itab. Let's hope for a redesign of public health
The point is the health itself, not in the disease or illness. People must be encouraged to stay healthy by the simplest way possible. Let clinical aspects of the disease are adressed by the clinicians.
Mariyana Stoynovska -- 'Medicare for all' is a reference in the U.S. to the medicare program which is primarily a program for the elderly who are on Social Security (same office administers them). Many people in the U.S. would like to see the government provide basic health care services to the whole population.
Paolo F Ricci -- I agree with your statement "public health disasters as COVID-19" as the world has been hit with an unprecdented health situation that most of our governments and leaders were simply unable to handle, deal with, and provide real leadership (including health leadership). We ALL need to rework public health, public health education, and governmental decision making and planning extensively. Also, Paolo, I find your description of your work interesting. I do think it embraces all areas of public health, medicine, and biology as there is so much left to learn, so many areas with unknowns, and certainly politicians who prefer to misunderstand knowledge to try to push their own agendas (certainly not an agenda that may be best for the country or world).
Lots of issues have been emerged with the Corona pandemic. Gaps in the activities in climate change, equity, health management, emergency preparedness, crisis management, leadership and global unity. etc are grossly visible. Reformed health system and reorganized WHO are urgently needed. We were more focused on NCDs, TB, Malaria, HIV, MCH issues but we were not ready to fight against a tiny virus. Even not only the crisis and how to minimize the controversy during pandemic should be a part of public health teaching. Biotech should be merged with public health to build a broader umbrella.
I agree with Muhammed that there are lots of issues that have emerged. One to add is the importance of effective communication strategies at all levels of engagement using multiple communication pathways.
Equity is always necessary and more in the field of health, unusual situations such as COVID 19, what they do is accentuate these differences, and confirm that a more integrative vision of the different areas that make the person is needed.
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