Dear Colleague,

 

Inroads continue to be made in turning discussion into concrete actions to reform the education of healthcare professional around the world.

 

Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Bernie Jones, Dr. Jo Ivey Bouford and Prof. Lai-Meng Looi, the InterAcademy Medical Panel (IAMP) is making great headway, most notably in Africa. Member academies have held workshops to discuss the Lancet Commission report findings and their local relevancy in Nigeria, Ghana (see story below) and South Africa. The Nigerian Academy of Science is convening a breakout group to share what these countries are planning with other African academies gathering in Lagos, Nigeria for the 8th Annual Meeting of African Science Academies next month (story below).

 

The IAMP is sponsoring an additional workshop in Malaysia on 1 December 2012, hosted by the Academy of Sciences of Malaysia. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet and member of the Commission on Education of Health Professionals for the 21st Century, will be the keynote speaker, addressing "Training of Health Workers for the 21st Century: A Global Effort for a Common Good."

 

Inspired by our Lancet Commission report, Nordic countries have also recognized the need for health professionals education reform. Read below about the Karolinska Institutet's conference in late September. Three of our former commissioners participated: JF, Zulfi Bhutta and David Serwadda.

 

More than 1,500 copies of the report itself have been distributed at conferences and workshops. It has been accessed on our website close to 7,000 times. Through DASH, Harvard's open repository of scholarly research, it has been downloaded 206 times by 182 users in 32 countries in the last 30 days alone.

 

We'll post details on these meetings as they become available on our website at www.healthprofessionals21.org. We continue to update news and upcoming events there as well as on Facebook  (https://www.facebook.com/HealthPros21) and Twitter ( https://twitter.com/#!/HealthPros21). Thanks for your continued interest in our global reform efforts.

 

 Best regards,

 

Julio Frenk, Dean, Harvard School of Public Health and Commission Co-chair 

 

Lincoln Chen, President, China Medical Board and Commission Co-chair

Nordic Countries Scrutinize Health Education Reform

A conference on "Educating Health Professionals for a New Century" was held at the Nobel Forum at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden on 28 September 2012, sponsored by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the InterAcademy Medical Panel (IAMP) and Karolinska Institutet (KI). The day-long conference had 70 participants, including faculty from Nordic universities and leading representatives from Mexico, Pakistan and Uganda. Read more.