Rethinking public health training: What would be ideal for the 21st century?

Abstract

It was only at the latter half of the last century that public health training started in Ethiopia. If we consider Gondar Public Health College as the locus for the beginning of public health training in Ethiopia, it has been a mere 60 years on its journey. Gondar College focused on the training of health officers and community midwives, working in rural areas at rudimentary health centers, who were tasked primarily with preventive health (1). The basic philosophy behind their training and deployment was the basic health services approach that dominated public health thinking in the 1950s and 1960s (2).