Well-trained personnel are crucial for the effective functioning of any health system more so in a country like India where the health needs of the population varies in each region. However, India suffers from a shortage of trained health care workers. Moreover, personnel in the public health system suffer from a lack of systematic and continuing education that would enable them to perform their tasks more effectively and efficiently. Traditionally public health education in India is being offered through departments of community medicine in medical colleges. However, the total number of graduates who are being trained is much less than the critical mass of trained public health professionals required for a country like India. Recently, various institutes with nonmedical background are engaged in offering courses in public health, such as Masters in Public Health (MPH), diploma, and masters programs in health and hospital management, and so on. Although till recently most of the public health education programs were available to medical graduates only, of late, many institutions have begun offering public health training for nonmedical graduates.
Current training programs for public health in India limit themselves primarily to formal and long-term training that requires the presence of the student in a classroom for extended periods of time, thereby taking them away from their field of work. This poses a challenge since there is already a shortage of sufficient health care personnel, especially in rural areas and being away for extended periods of time from their work would have a negative impact on the provision of health care at these facilities during this period. One way out of this dilemma is to harness the potential of distance education technology for the purpose of training and capacity building of India’s workforce in health. While several courses in public health are being conducted using distance education mode in India, a comprehensive database of all these courses is not available at any single location. Such a cataloging would help all the key stakeholders to understand the current status of distance education in public health in India and explore opportunities appropriately to respond to critical shortage of trained health professionals
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