Strengthening preparedness for public health practice: Developing graduate capabilities for a Master of Public Health

There is increasing recognition that many public health issues are global in their dimensions (e.g. SARS; climate change) and require new and sophisticated capabilities for effective responses. There is a critical need for developing public health practitioners who are workforce ready, able to adapt to the dynamic and diverse issues confronting public health and prepared to continue to learn and be reflexive in their own professional practice. Traditional academic practices that focus on acquisition of disciplinary based knowledge are no longer adequate. Despite the recent shift in much health professional education to outcomes based education (Harden 2002; Whitcomb 2004) there has been little consideration to date of the methodological issues in designing outcomes based curriculum for public health postgraduate education. This paper describes the methodological steps and considerations used for redeveloping a Master of Public Health (MPH) program within a Faculty of Medicine in an Australian university. It outlines the underpinning pedagogical approach with the contextualising of a set of public health competency standards and the development and embedding of a suite of graduate capabilities across the qualification. Engaging with a breadth of stakeholders in diverse public health service contexts and working with academics using a participative approach to the identification and development of the graduate capabilities were critical to the redevelopment of the curriculum. The revised MPH only commenced delivery this academic year and it is still too early to determine the impact on student satisfaction, graduation trends and workforce performance. However the methodology would appear to be sufficiently robust and transferable for outcomes based curriculum in other public health programs and contexts. Further research will be required to determine how such curriculum initiatives might impact on public health professional preparedness to address global health risks in the near future.