Washington, DC, 25 April 2022 (PAHO) - The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) organized the seventh meeting of the webinar series on the essential public health functions (EPHF), focused on the training strategies developed by PAHO to strengthen the institutional capacities of countries. This initiative involves a significant number of actors and sectors to ensure an intersectoral, broad, and pluralistic approach.
After welcoming remarks by PAHO Assistant Director Jarbas Barbosa da Silva Jr., Brazil PAHO Representative Socorro Gross Galiano presented the Portuguese version of the publication "The Essential Public Health Functions in the Americas. A Renewal for the 21st Century. Conceptual framework and description", which is added to the Spanish and English versions presented in 2020. Gross Galiano expressed the expectation of reaching every municipality in Brazil with the tools that PAHO has to offer.
Paulo Buss, director of the Center for Global Health and Health Diplomacy of Fiocruz, recognized the importance of evaluating the EPHF in Brazil and highlighted the work and leadership of PAHO in promoting EPHF as a strategic line in the strengthening of health systems in the Region and the world.
Ernesto Báscolo, PAHO advisor on Health Governance, Leadership, Policies, and Planning presented the strategies for education and training in the EPHF for the year 2022, highlighting that a self-learning course -in Spanish- is already available for the general public called "Introduction to the renewed Essential Public Health Functions (EPHF): Fundamentals, conceptual framework, and evaluation methodology". This course will soon be available in English and Portuguese.
Gabriel Listovsky, regional coordinator of the Virtual Campus for Public Health, highlighted the role of this educational platform for technical cooperation and recognized its potential to contribute to the development of the skills and competencies of health personnel, supporting the transformation of public health services and practices in the Americas region.
During the closing remarks, James Fitzgerald, Director of the Department of Health Systems and Services, thanked the more than 1,000 participants who joined the meeting, from 62 countries, as part of the webinar series that began in 2021. Fitzgerald also emphasized that one of the objectives of the PAHO EPHF training strategy is to motivate participants to be part of public health, to identify their contributions, and become agents of change to move toward universal health.
