Vietnam Public Health Association (VPHA) would like to shares information about the Project "Teaching Public Health: A Project" in support of Prof. Le Vu Anh - President of VPHA and Vietnam Journal of Public Health.

"Teaching Public Health: a Project

      Our project has run for 10 years, from 2006 to 2016, and is about to change slightly. A summary and evaluation of this first phaseis called for; it will be submitted to the Vietnam Journal of Public Health. In the present note we shall only sketch a few basic aspects.
      Our motto is "Public Health: Teaching clear ideas in a practical context". Our objective is to raise the level of competence of the lecturers of Public Health and to improve their teaching, both to medical students within their basic studies and to future specialists of Public Health. We address ourselves to the lecturers in all Vietnamese Faculties and Universities of Medicine, Medical Technology or Public Health with the exception of the Medical University of Hanoi and of Ho Chi Minh-City and the Hanoi School of Public Health.
     Until now the project rested on three columns:     

– New textbooks to present the content of modern teaching, both in Vietnamese and English. The following have appeared: Epidemiology - Key to Prevention; Health Education; Population Science and Public Health; Mathematics and Statistics in the Health Sciences; Environmental Health - Basic Principles. The text "Nutrition - The Epidemiologic Viewpoint" is being written.

– Yearly workshops. They consisted of excursions to illustrate practical work in Public Health, of joint work in discussion groups on urgent issues, for instance on more logical and useful curricula, and of presentations of research of some participants with extended discussions.

 – Individual counseling of lecturers by e-mail.

    The funds for the textbooks and for the workshops came mainly from the German Else Kröner-Fresenius-Stiftung. All work, with the exception of translating the textbooks, was done on a voluntary basis. No official organization was involved; this allowed flexibility, high scientific level and exceptional financial efficacy.
            The workshops have reached their goal and will therefore be discontinued. Otherwise the project will function as before."


                                          Klaus Krickeberg, April 2017