Health professionals for a new century: transforming education to strengthen health systems in an interdependent world

“…..A Lancet Commission highlights a call from 20 professional and academic leaders for major reform in the training of doctors and other healthcare professionals for the 21st century. Changes are needed because of fragmented, outdated, and static curricula that produce ill-equipped graduates. The Commission argues for major reform across the entire medical education system, in order to produce competency-led curricula for the future…”

a Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA
b China Medical Board, Cambridge, MA, USA
c Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan
d George Washington University Medical Center, Washington, DC, USA
e Independent member of House of Lords, London, UK
f James P Grant School of Public Health, Dhaka, Bangladesh
g US Institute of Medicine, Washington, DC, USA
h School of Public Health Universidad Peruana Cayetano, Heredia, Lima, Peru
i Peking University Health Science Centre, Beijing, China
j National Health Laboratory Service, Johannesburg, South Africa
k School of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
l University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
m The Rockefeller Foundation, New York, NY, USA
n Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi, India
o The Sage Colleges, Troy, MI, USA
p Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA, USA
q Makarere University School of Public Health, Kampala, Uganda
r Centre for Research on Population and Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon

Available online at: http://bit.ly/edUAoJ

Except from the report:

The first UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health underscored the present problem with medical education: “[T]here is no chance of operationalizing the right to health without the active engagement of many health professionals. Here, however, is a very major problem. To be blunt, most health professionals whom the Special Rapporteur meets have not even heard of the right to health. If they have heard of it, they usually have no idea what it means, either conceptually or operationally…. [I]f further progress is to be made towards the operationalization of the right to health, many more health professionals must begin to appreciate the human rights dimensions of their work.” He further argues that a rights-based approach to health can be an invaluable asset for professionals to devise more equitable policies and programmes, to promote
important health issues on national and international agendas, to mobilise more funds, and to promote
respect for the dignity of those who they serve.
* Hunt P. Report on progress and obstacles to the health and human rights movement (A/HRC/4/28). Geneva: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2007. http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/health/right/issues.htm