Challenges of public health education system reform in Georgia

In Georgia, under the Soviet Era, Public Health Education (PHE) was mainly focused on environmental health and infectious disease epidemiology and control. The current piece of work describes experience of the newly established School of Public Health (SPH), Tbilisi State Medical University (TSMU) with regard to building a modern PHE system in Georgia, and this is discussed in light of public health system reforms currently ongoing in Georgia.

Available evidence shows that Georgian public health professionals lack adequate knowledge and skills to address the existing public health needs. Major problem has been low capacity of national training institutions and lack of adequate training programs. To meet these challenges, the new SPH was established at the auspices of the TSMU in 2007. Involvement of the cadre of young Georgian professionals educated abroad and setting up an international partnership with leading international public health training centers have been the main strategic approaches that have been employed for establishing the SPH. The 2 year MPH program has been introduced consisting of 120 credits, with 30 credits devoted to master thesis. MPH program is comprised of 60 modules grouped into five major work streans such as applied public health, epidemiology and biostatistics, health management, policy and economics, health promotion, and environmental and occupational health. Main barriers have been inability/ unwillingness of the state to provide free public health education at the master’s level, conservatism of established academia, limited job opportunities for graduates, and limitations in national funding for public health research, etc.

Design of modern programs, involvement of motivated national professionals, and international partnerships alone can not bring us to the desired results, unless there is adequate support from the policy level to create a conducive policy environment with sufficient resources to address the aforementioned problems and assure adequate functionality of public health education programs.