THE new Doctorate in Public Health (DrPH) will strengthen leadership in the public health sector and in time, improve health outcomes regionally.

This is according to Minister of Health Rudyard Spencer.

The four-year part-time DrPH began at UWI, Mona, this past week with seven public health physicians – five of them from Jamaica, one from Trinidad & Tobago and another from St Kitts & Nevis. It will prepare them for specialist practice and leadership at the highest level.

The group includes a specialist in family medicine and a consultant obstetrician with a master’s degrees in biostatistics and information technology.

Speaking at the official launch of the programme at the Mona Visitors’ Lodge and Conference Centre on September 1, Spencer noted that the DrPH has been launched one month after a high-level meeting on the Centre of Excellence for Health Workforce Development and Planning established in Jamaica last year, and against a backdrop of an increased focus on human resources in health globally.

Spencer said he hoped “that some of the research that will come out of the UWI DrPH will help us to move closer toward achieving best practice leadership of the health sectors in the region”.

The minister said: “It is good to have brilliant clinicians across the various fields of health, but it is better to have brilliant clinicians who can master the theories and practices of transformational and negotiation-based leadership, systems thinking and good governance which are demanded by an increasingly complex health system”.

He said that health workers at all levels, must understand “the task environment” which is not confined to health but which also covers the broader public service with its maze of policies and legislation that impact the health sector.

Praising the UWI for “a fine tradition in developing a highly skilled and competent health workforce in the region, the minister said that the DrPH “must seek to build the policy capacity within the health sector not just to understand and respond to emerging needs but more importantly, to develop innovative policies that will change the future and fortunes of people of the Caribbean in a significant and fundamental way”.

UWI Vice Chancellor Professor E Nigel Harris said that “the programme is specifically designed to address the needs of the Caribbean for a cadre of clinical researchers”.

“It will fill the gap for critical thinkers, policymakers and leaders in the health sector and benefit not just Jamaica but the entire region,” he said.

Peter Figueroa, Professor of Public Health, Epidemiology and HIV/AIDS at the UWI, said that the DrPH, the first programme of its kind in the Caribbean, “is a response to a clearly articulated need by the governments of the Caribbean for advanced professional training in public health”.

He noted that “given the many diverse health challenges faced by our people, including HIV, chronic disease, mental illness, injuries and the environment, it is critical that we equip our top public health professionals with the specialist skills and competencies to address these challenges in cost-effective ways”.

He stressed that the DrPH, which is university-wide and being offered on all three campuses beginning with Mona, is to challenge the scholars to take a wider view of the role and application of public health within the region and beyond.

Speaking on behalf of the DrPH candidates, Dr Hazel Laws said they were honoured to be the first cohort and by 2013, the first DrPH graduates in the Caribbean.

Noting that the Harvard University School of Medicine launched the first DrPH degree in the USA, in 1909, Laws praised the UWI for “blazing the trail in the region by launching the first DrPH in the Caribbean”.

She told guests at the launch event “we are committed to excel”.