Public health is “the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organised efforts and informed choices of society, organisations, public and private, communities and individuals.”. The highest quality public health practices are population-centred, equitable, proactive, health-promoting, risk-reducing, vigilant, transparent, effective, and efficient (Honorá & Scott, 2010). 

Today, public health is facing increasing and complex challenges. In order to overcome these challenges and serve the growing population, public health professionals need to develop new knowledge, skills, and attributes. More importantly, public health professionals should collaborate with other stakeholders across various departments, organisations, and international borders to successfully solve or at least reduce the magnitude of these challenges. Lately, the lessons we have learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic is that public health practice played an important role in our daily life to protect the population and reduce the pressure on the health system. For this reason, we will introduce the participants to the main concept of public health and public health practice in this course.  

This is particularly important in using the best available evidence to make an informed decision in supporting intervention or establishing policy. Evidence-based public health practice is very effective in systematically finding health and health care needs to establish a new programme to close those gaps. There are different types of needs among the communities and the individuals, such as, social needs which is based on population perception; epidemiological needs, which refer to a health problem affecting a large number of people (epidemics), behavioural needs, which is related to individual or community lifestyle, and finally other needs which could be environmental needs that related to schools, transportation. Therefore, learners in this course will define and conduct a health needs assessment and evaluation in practical public health by using the public health toolkit.  

The public health practice course will cover one of the main topics: principles in public health. Public health principles are equity, fairness and inclusiveness, empowerment, and effectiveness. Participants will be able to apply those principles to public health practice and its impact on population health. In addition, the course will introduce participants to the science and principles of infectious diseases in communities, hosts in chronic infectious disease, how to cut the agent to prevent transmission, and the role and the impact of the vaccine on population health. Furthermore, learners will be familiar and up to date with the fundamentals of public health and confident in discussing health issues when they move into practice.  

Imperial College London WHO Collaborating Centre for Public Health Training and Education (ICL-WHO CC) has organised a three-day bespoke intensive training course tailored to develop and build the capacity of a cohort of public health professionals in public health practice.  

Course Overview 

The Public Health Practice course will enable the participants to reflect on and encourage the behaviours they require to become effective public health professionals, whether academic, practitioner, clinician, manager, or leader. The course covers the origins of public health, health improvement, behaviour change, and health protection. The course is a bespoke programme based on top UK university successful courses in the foundation of public health approach in practice.  The aim is to help participants improve their knowledge and skills to become more successful public health professionals. The courses address a range of domains, including: 

1. Introduction to public health practice 
2. Evidenced-based research in public health practice 
3. The main elements for Public Health Principle
4. Introduction to Epidemiology
5. Diagnose and investigate health problems and health hazards in the community 
6. Health Needs Assessment and Health Impact Assessment
7. Health Promotion Inform and educate people about health issues 
8. Infectious disease in the communities and the role of the vaccine   
9. Disease Prevention and Health Protection
10. Individual and Community Change in Behaviours 

Target Audience 

This course is designed specifically for professionals actively engaged in public health who are looking to improve their knowledge and skills, which carry out the day-to-day tasks of public health organisations and are not in management positions. The target audience includes data collection and analysis, fieldwork, program planning, outreach, communications, customer service, and programme support.  

Course Structure  

The curriculum is based on successful courses in public health practice which covers all the aspects in science and art of public health in terms of prevention, evidenced-based research, diagnosis and investigates of health problems in the community, infectious disease and the role of the vaccine, behavioural change, and public health principles.  

At its core, the teaching and learning in this course are interactive and are based on participants’ involvement and engagement.  

Learning will take place in the form of group work, self-directed learning, and lectures. The course is divided into four main themes, within which a series of sessions have been designed to encapsulate the most current issues relevant to the themes: 

1. Develop plans that support individual and community health efforts through good public health practice. 
2. The on how to apply an intervention among the community and measure the intervention’s success rate.
3. Reduce the impact of the disease in the community.   
4. Assess the problem in the community through health needs assessment.