ACHEST AT THE HEALTH PROFESSIONALS EDUCATION CONFERENCE 2021
The ACHEST Director of Health Workforce and Development , Dr. Elsie Kiguli-Malwadde was one of the speakers at the two-day health Profession's Education Conference in Kampala on 27th – 28 May 2021.
The conference was under the theme; "Transforming Health Professions Education in the 21st Century: From Theory to Practice".
The Conference was organized by the Eastern Africa Health Professions Educators' Association (EAHPEA), and the Health Professions Education Partnership Initiative (HEPI) which is co-hosted by the College of Health Sciences, Makerere University.
The goal of the HEPI, which started in August 2018, is to improve service delivery of the Ugandan health system through strengthened interdisciplinary health professional education and research training to produce graduates with competencies to address the priority health needs
of the population.
HEPI has seen the birth of “Health Professions Education and training for Strengthening
the Health System and Services in Uganda(HEPI-SHSSU).” The innovation
is implemented by a partnership between ACHEST, Makerere College of Health Sciences, Busitema University School of Health Sciences, Kabale University School of Medicine, Clarke International University, Mulago School of Nursing and Midwifery, Yale University and John Hopkins University.
Dr. Kiguli-Malwadde, who is also the Vice President of the African Forum for Research and Education in Health (AFREhealth), made a presentation on developing an inter-professional curriculum to improve team based case in Sub-Saharan Africa: focusing on learners in transition.
She used the example of Strengthening Inter-professional Education for HIV (STRIPE HIV), a program being implemented by AFREhealth and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).
The STRIPE HIV programme is about building the capacity of health professionals in the sub-Saharan region using an inter-professional approach. It links health professionals education to clinical practice(health system) and uses partnerships to create communities of practice.
Dr. Kiguli-Malwadde said the overreaching goal of STRIPE is to strengthen preservice training institutions across Africa to produce the next generation of healthcare workers that can deliver high quality team-based health care. It is delivered through 17 Modules based on HIV content using a case-based format.
The impact has been enormous. There are 40 partner training institutions participating through 100 affiliated clinical sites institutions across 14 countries.
This has led to improvements in HIV knowledge, learner confidence, and greater awareness of the need for interprofessional collaboration, said. Dr. Kiguli-Malwadde.
However, she noted that this program faces challenges that include, administrative and financial challenges, issues to do with quality assurance, translation into curricular, transformation into practice as well as sustainability. Yet, there are lessons learned, namely, that there is great leadership potential in SSA, there was expansive programmatic capacity and tremendous opportunity around Interprofessional Education (IPE) and Quality improvement (QI)
The Makerere University Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic Affairs), Dr. Umar Kakumba in his opening remarks noted that health is a critical factor towards sustaining and promoting human development. He urged stakeholders to be involved in strengthening education and training systems for health professionals.
He stressed that both EAHPEA and the HEPI Project provide opportunities and platforms for stakeholders to collaborate, plan and implement strategies that will improve the competence of educators and ultimately, the quality of graduates and health of communities.
HEPI’s Principal Investigator Prof. Sarah Kiguli chaired the committee that organized the conference.
For details: https://news.mak.ac.ug/2021/05/dr-kakumba-officially-opens-hpe-conference-2021/
Compiled by Carol Natukunda, Communications Specialist, ACHEST