Five years have passed since CHEPSAA’s first curriculum development workshop, where we began the development of our first open access course, Introduction to Complex Health Systems (ICHS). Since 2014, ICHS and Introduction to Health Policy and Systems Research (IHPSR), our second open access course, have been run in July each year as part of the Winter School of the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. Understanding and Analyzing Health Policy (UAHP), a third open access course in the CHEPSAA stable, has been running for much longer.

This year, we asked a handful of Winter School students from Ghana, Zambia and South Africa to tell us about their jobs and to reflect on their experiences of attending the week-long IHPSR and UAHP courses, as well as the relevance of these courses to their careers.

This is what they had to say.

CHEPSAA has a portfolio of three open access postgraduate health policy and systems courses. The first of these – Health Policy Analysis – was launched in 2007 and later became part of the CHEPSAA offering when its developers joined CHEPSAA. Dr Joanne Yoong of the National University of Singapore was one of the first to write to CHEPSAA to tell us that she was using the course materials. In this blog, Dr Yoong reflects on the work that she did to adapt the materials to her undergraduate course. This is interesting because most health policy and systems teaching takes place at postgraduate level. Her experience can therefore provide guidance to others interested in expanding their teaching in this direction.

On celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2015, the James P. Grant School of Public Health (JPGSPH) in Bangladesh conducted an extensive internal curriculum review of its Masters in Public Health (MPH) degree, recognising that the field of public health and the country context is changing. In February this year, Dr Vera Scott of the University of the Western Cape in South Africa represented CHEPSAA at a workshop that sought to take forward the recommendations of the curriculum review. In this blog, Vera writes about the curriculum review, the workshop to further develop the curriculum and other experiences and lessons from her journey.

In a first for the continent, universities in West, East and South Africa, with the support of partners in the US and UK, are working on developing a Pan African Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) degree. This degree will have a focus on public health leadership in Africa and is aimed at current and potential strategic-level leaders who intend to advance a professional practice career in public health. In this blog, Irene Akua Agyepong tells us more about the rationale for this initiative, the programme's concept and components, as well as initial implementation steps in Ghana and Nigeria.

Already downloaded to 55 countries across the world, CHEPSAA’s open access master’s-level course Introduction to Complex Health Systems recently found a new home in Kilifi, Kenya, when it was pilot-taught with health managers and MPH students from the five counties in the coastal region of Kenya.

This course was inspired by our long-term health systems governance research within the Resilient and Responsive Health Systems (RESYST) Learning Site in Kilifi. From this work, we identified the need to support health system managers, particularly at the county level in Kenya as they undertake their new roles of steering and managing health services within a highly dynamic devolved political system.

The enthusiasm for health policy and systems work, the capacity to understand and conduct it, and the networks of people and organisations in support of it recently took an important step forward in Ghana with the inauguration of the Health Policy and Systems (HPS) New Year Seminars.

The two week long seminar series, which had its maiden run from 18-29 January 2016, brought together from all over the country more than 20 mid-level researchers with the aim of developing capacity for health systems leadership, practice and research. The participants worked in the health system in different capacities, including doctors, pharmacists and nurses, and represented a variety of organisations such as urban, rural and private hospitals, as well as district health teams.