The Virtual Campus for Public Health encouraged the development of a Learning Pathway in Primary Health Care

Washington DC, 11 December 2023 (PAHO)- The Virtual Campus for Public Health (VCPH) participated in the workshop "Capacity development in PHC: Learning Pathways for person centered models of care”, at the Regional Forum: Alliance for Primary Health Care in the Americas, which took place from December 4 to 6, 2023, in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Gabriel Listovsky, Chief of the VCPH special program, presented on the topic “Learning Pathways within the framework of lifelong education” and highlighted that it is necessary to design plans for continuous training of human resources for health in accordance with the regional and national contexts. This means, advancing in the design of Learning Pathways to strengthen human resources.

The defining of a Learning Pathway makes it possible to align the needs of the working world with the training options available to workers. “It represents a set of programmed training actions from a variety of sources: courses, workshops, seminars, webinars, community of practice, among others; which contribute to the development of the competencies defined for a specific professional field. It is made up of mandatory, complementary or optional spaces and common content for all profiles that share the same professional family,” he added.

The permanent training of health workers is a fundamental challenge for the coming years. In this sense, Gabriel Listovsky identified a series of challenges to be addressed ahead of the Learning Pathways project.  Among them, he highlighted the need: to enhance collaborative work; to promote inter-institutional articulation; to work on the recognition of certifications and micro-credentials in the region and to strengthen training and work with a focus on the perspective of competencies.

“The Virtual Campus is more than a platform, it is the area of PAHO that has the responsibility for drawing up the technical-pedagogical guidelines for educational proposals in public health,” he remarked.

To conclude, the chief of the VCPH special program said that “behind every project there are people working. We must be very attentive and align the needs for health system transformation to the opportunities and conditions available for the training of workers".