The Report
The vision articulated in the Commission’s report—“Health Professionals for a New Century: Transforming Education to Strengthen Health Systems in an Interdependent World”—is global [Figure: Vision for a new era of professional education]. It calls for a new era of health professional education that advances transformative learning and harnesses the power of interdependence in education [Figure: Key components of the educational system]. The goal is to spark a second century of reforms in all countries and all health professions in order ultimately to assure that people everywhere have access to high-quality comprehensive health services. There is therefore a fundamental linkage between professional education on the one hand and health conditions on the other [Figure: Systems framework].
Major findings:
-
Insufficient funding. There is a global crisis in the education of health professionals—doctors, nurses, public health professionals—because there is insufficient funding to train the kind of health professionals that complex health systems demand today. In addition, we get little value for the money that is invested. The total global expenditure for health professional education is about US$100 billion per year, less than 2% of health expenditures worldwide (click here for Estimated Global Expenditures PDF). -
Mismatch between health needs and supply of health professionals. There is no correlation between the burden of disease and number of medical schools, nursing schools and public health programs [Figure: world map resized]. The poorest parts of the world often lack any capacity to train health professionals.
Key recommendations:
-
The Commission calls for a broad reform movement, encompassing instructional design (what we teach and how) and institutional design (schools or universities that should carry out instruction) [Panel: Proposed reforms]. -
Instructional design – the approach should be competency-based and inter-professional, bringing together health professionals to work as a cohesive team. It should use IT to empower health professional during training and in the field.
-
Institutional design – much tighter coordination is needed between education and health sector to ensure that the type of health professionals trained matches health needs in every country. In addition, global coalitions, associations and networks are needed to better leverage educational resources from around the world.
Enabling actions:
-
Pursuit of these reforms will encounter many barriers and require mobilization, financing, policies and incentives. Recommendations, therefore, call for four immediate to long-term enabling actions to create an environment that is conducive to specific reforms [Figure: Recommendations for reform and enabling actions].
-
Mobilize leadership
-
Enhance investments
-
Align accreditation
-
Strengthen global learning
-
Downloads available:
Commissioned papers:
-
Larry D. Gruppen, Rajesh S. Mangrulkar, Joseph C. Kolars. Competency-based education in the health professions: Implications for improving global health, April 2010 download PDF
-
David T. Stern, Andrzej Wojtczak, M. Roy Schwarz. Accreditation of Medical Education: A Global Outcomes-Based Approach, June 2010 download PDF
-
Robert F. Woollard. Social Accountability and Accreditation in the Future of Medical Education, July 2010 download PDF
-
Björg Pálsdóttir, André-JacquesNeusy. Transforming Medical Education: Lessons Learned from THEnet, June 2010 download PDF
-
Eric L. Keuffel, Alex Preker, Catherine Michaud, Lincoln Chen, Julio Frenk. Estimation of Global Medical Education Expenditures, July 2010 download PDF
Order a copy:
-
The report is distributed by Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA. Click here for order details.
Multi-media: