Dear Colleague,
What has been the progress in the follow-up to the Commission report? Does it still command attention and interest? Are translations or implementation being pursued, and if so, where and how?
We are pleased to report that we joined a workshop at University of California San Francisco, hosted by Jaime Sepulveda, the new Executive Director of their Global Health Sciences (story below) that focused on the Commission and its implication for health professional education in the United States. We continue to be gratified over how widely accepted and endorsed are the report findings and recommendations. Strides are being made towards strengthening networks linking together educational institutions engaged in educational reforms in different regions.
There are now several North American universities with global health programs that have embraced the findings and recommendations of the Lancet Commission report and whose leaders have begun to grapple with how best to translate them to their institutions. This is happening, for example, at Harvard School of Public Health, University of California San Francisco and the University of Washington.
With much wider implications is the initiative by Judith Wasserheit, Vice-Chair of the Department of Global Health at University of Washington, who is forging a partnership between the Consortium of Universities of Global Health (CUGH) and the Commission. The 2011 Global Health Conference on 9-11 November 2011 will feature two sessions focusing on the Lancet Commission Report on Education of Health Professionals for the 21st Century. It is anticipated that these two sessions will facilitate dissemination of the Commission's work across a broader audience of health sciences educators and stimulate additional efforts to address the Report's recommendations in North America and other regions. Over 1,000 people from 80 universities and 30 countries will participate in the conference.
In Asia the 5-country Asia Network (Bangladesh, China, India, Thailand, and Vietnam) has now already met two times (Hanoi in April 2011; Khon Kaen in Thailand in August to develop a common survey instrument) and expect to meet two more times in the coming months (Cebu, Philippines in November and Bangkok Prince Mahidol Conference in January 2012) to pursue national reforms.
In other regions of the world, we and the other Commissioners continue to distribute and discuss the report, "Health Professionals for a New Century: Transforming Education to Strengthen Health Systems in an Interdependent World." Recent events at which the report was discussed were held in Brazil, Colombia and Tokyo and upcoming events include those in New York, the Philippines and Montreal, Canada.
To support such reform initiatives, David de Ferranti and colleagues at the Results for Development Institute conducted an analysis of data on variables expected to influence health performance. Based on analyses of the relationships between health system inputs and outcomes, this analysis suggests countries that could be further examined to determine whether they perform better than expected on health outcomes or attracting HRH at least in part because of their approach to HRH training. (See story below.)
You'll find more information on our website, which is updated weekly at http://www.healthprofessionals21.org. Please forward this to others who might be interested.
Best regards,
Julio Frenk, Dean, Harvard School of Public Health and Commission Co-chair
Lincoln Chen, President, China Medical Board and Commission Co-chair
