Public Health and Emergency Workforce Roadmap: The Third Steering Committee Meeting

In the historic setting of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS), the third World Health Organization (WHO) Public Health and Emergency Workforce Roadmap Steering Committee meeting took place on July 6 – 7, 2023, in Rome. The Committee considered and endorsed new guidance and tools for countries.

More than 75 members of the Roadmap Steering Committee and Technical Advisory Groups have dedicated several months to reviewing and revising the three interconnected core areas of the Roadmap: Revising the Essential Public Health Functions (EPHFs), Competency-Based Public Health Education, and Measuring the Public Health Workforce, which were presented during this meeting. A general consensus has been reached on the readiness of these documents for release after final coordination editing.

The focus will now shift to implementing the three sections of the Roadmap, aiming to utilize these tools in 100 countries by 2024. Two additional WHO working groups will provide communication and coordination support.

Detailed discussions were held on the training of future generations of professionals involved in public health and emergency response, with a particular emphasis on the tasks performed by public health experts. This highlighted the local knowledge and skills required by students and early-career professionals. Early-career public health professionals have the potential to benefit from the revised and redesigned education framework and play a pivotal role in disseminating the EPHFs.

The WFPHA has endorsed the Roadmap and is actively involved in and supporting this work through the WFPHA Public Health Professionals’ Education and Training (PET) Working Group. The Roadmap subgroup on competency-based education is co-chaired by Dr Priscilla Robinson, Co-Chair of the PET Working Group.

Young WFPHA will contribute by identifying and supporting existing and emerging links between the Roadmap and its young audience in order to bolster the remarkable work accomplished so far.

The Roadmap stems from the 2021 Declaration of the G-20 Health Ministers, under the Italian G-20 presidency, which recognized the “importance of investing in and protecting an adequate and well-trained health workforce and community-based health services, addressing a global shortage, increasing productive capacities to meet needs in the face of health risks and emergencies, as well as insufficient human resource capacity at national and local levels.”