Washington, DC, 21 April 2023 (PAHO)- The Virtual Campus for Public Health of the Pan American Health Organization (VCPH/PAHO) launched a series of webinars "Training and exchange meetings 2023". The program seeks to offer training on priority topics in the management of virtual education to strengthen collaborative networks between the subregions and the VCPH country nodes.
The country nodes are a form of organization of the Virtual Campus that facilitates the management of training priorities, through decentralization in the PAHO Country Offices and in the national teams, working in accordance with the processes of technical cooperation for each country.
The first seminar was held on 20 April with more than 450 participants.
“The PAHO Virtual Campus seeks to bring knowledge to train and develop the skills of health workers in the institutions where they work - health centers, the first level of care, hospitals, governments-- which are of great importance to improve the health of all people in the Americas,” said James Fitzgerald, director of PAHO's Department of Health Systems and Services, during the launch.
“The series of seminars seek to expand our presence in the countries through the development of the Virtual Campus nodes, which are fundamental to training human resources at the local level, according to countries’s needs,” he added.
“This mechanism allows us to strengthen and expand access to health services on priority issues for health systems such as immunization, prevention, control and elimination of communicable and non-communicable diseases, and the challenges of the social determinants of health, all based on the principles and values of primary health care towards the achievement of universal access to health and universal health coverage,” he concluded.
The series will include the following topics: the management of virtual education, the strategic use of the information generated by the Virtual Campus, the synergy between the training instances and PAHO's technical cooperation, among others.
One webinar will be held per month between April and October 2023, with the participation of experts from organizations linked to virtual education and from PAHO, who will make presentations and exchange experiences. The seminars will have English and Spanish interpretation.
The program is aimed at the personal responsible for the management of the country nodes, the teachers and researchers of the educational institutions that are part of the network of nodes, and the health professionals interested in permanent health education.
