Transformative Model of Public Health Education

It is imperative to take a diligent stock of the actual fact that, in the context of globalization and irrespective of the geographic boundaries, the goal for all health professionals worldwide should be to get educated to mobilize knowledge and get engaged in critical reasoning and ethical conducts to become competent participants in patient and population-centered health systems as members of locally responsive and globally connected teams.[1]

It is imperative to bear in mind that catering to the cause of health as a fundamental right in the parlance of humanism as well accruable to every global citizen beyond any and every type of inequities is possible only through a meaningful efficacious, efficient, and effective public healthcare delivery system. The robustness of the public healthcare delivery system is dependent on the efficacious, efficient, and effective public health education system capable of generating efficient and efficacious trained health manpower.

In this regard, if one looks at the development of medical education overall and incorporates public health within it, the seminal prepositions are in terms of the following:

1. Flexner’s report resulting in invocation of ‘Formative model’ of medical education.[2]

2. WHO initiated ‘Reorientation of medical education model’ (ROME).[3]

3. LANCET Commission Report evoking ‘Transformative model’ of medical education.[4]

The transformative model of medical education, including the incorporation of public health therein, is the global model of medical education for the 21^st century all across the globe.

The several institutional and instructional innovations included in the LANCET Commission Report must be carefully considered in order to incorporate them for the results related to “transformative learning” and “interdependence in medical education,” which includes public health education.[5]

The goal of “transformative learning,” as defined in the aforementioned report, is to cultivate enlightened change agents by fostering the development of leadership qualities. It entails three key changes: moving from memorizing facts to searching, analyzing, and synthesizing information for decision-making; obtaining core competencies for productive teamwork in health systems in place of pursuing professional credentials; and moving from nonclinical adoption of educational models to innovative adoption of international resources to address local priorities.

Similar to this, interdependence in education also entails three fundamental changes: moving from a fragmented to a coordinated health and education system; establishing networks, alliances, and consortia in place of standalone institutions; and focusing less on internal institutional issues and more on utilizing international sources of innovations, teaching resources, and educational content.

It is mandated in the global context that availing the principles enshrined in LANCET Commission Report including the structural and operational modifications commensurate with the said principles needs to be evoked in totality for invocation of a full-fledged Transformative model of medical education with reference to public health as well inbuilt therein so as to ensure that the fundamental right to health for every global citizen stands realized in the shortest duration in the 21^st century through invocation of the trained public health manpower on the required count, which is efficient, effective, and efficacious for dispensation of this vital mantle of responsibility in real sense. The earlier this mandated need is met with by the intelligentsia, the greater it would be in the interest of men, mankind, humanity, and humanism in unison with each other making the public health medical practice totally humanized and socialized in terms of the needs of the global society at large.