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Initiatives of the State & School of Public Health |
| The New initiatives of the State |
The Nepal Health Sector Reform Strategy has been developed in
response to ensuing equitable access to quality health care by all as
reflected in the policy objectives of the Tenth Five-Year Plan. The
Strategy summarizes key reforms relating to how the country could handle
the challenges of meeting the health welfare needs of all, especially
the poor, women and other vulnerable groups. The key features of the
Health Sector Strategy are:
- Ensure universal access to essential health care services by
using cost-effective interventions,
- Establish Public-Private-NGO Partnerships in the delivery of
quality health care services,
- Decentralization of the health system for fair and efficient
delivery of health services
- Obtain better value for out of pocket expenditure on health by
devising pre-paid alternative health financing mechanisms,
- Provide access to services outside essential health care
services,
- Monitor sector performance through the use of logical framework,
particularly in achieving the health component of the Millennium
Goals and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP).
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| The Proposal: The School of Public Health: |
| Against such backdrop there is a need to produce public health
leaders who can skillfully deal with the above health development
issues. We need to produce public health human resources that can
effectively deal within and among countries and national and global
health issues. The SPH need to produce human resources that are
sensitive to people’s health needs, motivated and skilled in engineering
public health policies and actions that would bring health care services
equitable to rich and poor alike. |
| Vision Statement |
"The School of Public Health would produce trained human resources
that can run health system in which there is equitable access to
coordinated quality health care services in rural and urban areas,
characterized by self reliance, full community participation,
decentralization, gender sensitivity, effective and efficient
management, and private and NGO sector participation in the provision
and financing of health services resulting in improved health status of
the population."
To make the graduates of the school of public health deal with such
issues effectively as mentioned in the vision statement we like to
propose this school of public health as school of excellence. |
| Role and functions of the School of Public Health |
- The SPH is envisaged to have the following role and functions:
- Develop and organize various courses and training programs in
public health at various levels e.g. BPH, MPH, MPhil, DrPH, PhD, and
short courses on areas like Health Sector Reform, Primary Health
Care and Research Methodology.
- Organize national, regional and international workshops,
seminars and other group activities.
- Provide consultancy and support services in all sectors.
- Disseminate research findings by publishing reports, books,
monographs and other forms of documents of public health interests.
- Take leadership role in the publication of an international
professional journal, "Nepalese Journal of Public Health" (as
compared to "American Journal of Public Health", British journal of
Public Health").
- Conduct operational research in the field e.g. developing
appropriate health care delivery system, community health insurance
etc.
- Conduct health policy research and advice concerned institutions
including the Government in matters of health policies.
- Provide advisory role to the Government and other institutions
in public health research and program evaluation.
- Function as "National Public Health Resource Center".
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| Students |
| All qualified candidates will be treated equally regardless of sex,
race and creed for the admission in MPH or any course of the SPH.With
regard to the admission criteria for the MPH program, for example, the
students will be selected in view of their background experiences and
aptitude towards the program. All candidates are required to pass an
admission test. The program should aim high academically and in value
experiences. We expect sponsored candidates from His Majesty’s
Government, NGOs, INGOs and various international organizations from
Nepal as well as from abroad. To begin with, it is reasonable to admit
about 20 students in each intake.
Physicians selected for admission to the MPH program should have an
MBBS. Other medical and public health professionals such as nurses,
public health bachelors (BPH) and veterinary doctors should have at
least one year of work experience in addition to at least Bachelors
degree in their respective areas. Professionals such as engineers,
agriculturists, and law professionals with at least Bachelors degree in
their respective fields will be considered for admission to MPH program.
For those coming from social sciences such as sociology, economics and
anthropology the candidates should have at least Masters’ degree and two
years’ of work experiences in health-related field. A 4-6
weeks-orientation course in public health need to be prepared for such
candidates. |
| Faculty |
| Retention and recruitment of good faculty for teaching and research
is important for any school. We have a severe limitation on good faculty
members in the area of public health. We need to find trained
professionals in the country for recruitment, though the number is
limited. Also we need to look for Nepalese living abroad who are
interested to be recruited as faculty. We need to train some giving
priority to the existing faculty in the Department of Community Medicine
as suggested by Prof. C. S. Agrawal, Prof. Prahlad Karki and Dr.
Nilambar Jha in their report after their visit to India. Most training
should be carried out of the Region to avoid high cost and loss of the
trained faculty. Some faculty can be trained in specialized areas where
the human resources are completely lacking such as health management,
advance epidemiology, health economics, health policy, etc. To compensate the shortage of the Nepali faculty, availability can be
explored in the Region. One option seems to be to develop a long-term
relationship with selected Schools of Public Health in the USA, UK,
Australia and Scandinavian countries. The relationship might include
among other things an exchange of faculty. Another option suggested by
Cash, Thankappan and Beal, is to seek support for international and
national faculty who would travel among a number of Institutions in
various countries conducting workshops and courses. In addition, "guest
lecturers" could be invited for specific purposes.
In view of a possible enrollment of about 20 students in the beginning
and also need to provide some training to the medical students as well,
we need a basic number of faculties of at least ten. This number could
be expanded depending on the opportunity of expansion of the program.
The basic faculty recruited should be in areas of Behavioral Sciences,
Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Environmental Health, Health Economics and
Health Management. Faculty development for developing skills in teaching
as well as in research is also important. The faculty has to have
leadership skills with broad training and experience. There is a need of
strong base of faculty to integrate and determine curriculum and
appropriate visits. |
| Field Practice |
For a student of public health, the community is the laboratory for
learning, practicing and sharpening the community health care delivery
skills and attitude. Such field training programs can provide learning
opportunities of implementing certain health reform strategies initiated
by the Ministry of Health.
The existing field program of BPKIHS can be expanded and more
appropriate activities with the communities and organizations (govt.,
community-based NGOs and INGOs) can be utilized to enrich the
experiences of the students. The BPKIHS is already working seriously to
establish field training centers in urban as well as in rural areas for
teaching, training, service delivery and research. |
| Research Activities |
| Research is essential to the development of faculty and the
intellectual growth of the school. If the SPH remains only as a training
center it will cease to grow. The field of public health is constantly
changing so that it must be prepared to change direction and move into
new areas. In addition to the quantitative methods, there is a need for
qualitative exploratory studies and intervention studies addressing key
health problems. A research agenda is not just for the faculty, each student should be
required to devote six months to developing a research proposal,
conducting a research project, writing up the findings, and preparing a
manuscript for publication. This requires faculty and student training
in how to write and prepare a research proposal. Workshops and short
courses to teach these skills to faculty should be made available. They
will then teach the students. In addition, the skills necessary to
analyze data and prepare manuscript also need to be organized for
faculty and students for those who need better training. |
| Accreditation |
| The School of Public Health should carefully follow all requirements
for accreditation at the national and international levels as it plans
to admit students from other countries in the region. Also the
curriculum should be designed in accordance with the course guidelines
of the "network of schools of public health"/or international
accreditation body" so that the students can transfer credits to other
countries. The BPKIHS is already an active member of such international
network. |
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