Strengthening public health education in population and reproductive health in Africa through North-South partnership: The Gates Partners experience

Poor reproductive health (RH) constitutes one of the leading public health problems in the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We report here a north-south partnership aimed at addressing the human resources development challenge in Africa by strengthening public health education and training to improve population and reproductive health (PRH) outcomes by increasing access to quality education, strengthening health research capacity to provide evidence-based platforms for effective intervention, and translating scholarship and science into actions in the policy realm and through community-based activities. Partnership programs focus on the educational dimension of the human resources equation, providing students with improved learning facilities and enhanced work environments and faculty with opportunities for professional development. Since 2003, six SSA universities have been participating in the various aspects of the capacity building process. So far, sixty faculty members in the partnership have attended PRH courses at Johns Hopkins, 92 PRH courses have been offered across the six universities, 266 of their master students elected PRH concentrations, and 82 have graduated. Hitherto none of the six universities had a graduate degree specialization in PRH. The health work force crisis as it pertains to mitigating the population burden of poor reproductive health is slowly but increasingly being addressed by this partnership.