This program aims to strengthen, a new cadre of public health professionals called Community Health Officers (CHOs) who are posted in the Health & Wellness Centres (HWCs) or Ayushnam Arogya Mandir (AAM). This is the largest known virtual mentoring program combining innovative cascading mentorship model and virtual training approaches to mentor large numbers without displacing from workplaces. 30 National Mentors (NMs) and 393 State Mentors (SMs) have been certified. 15400 Community Health Officers (CHOs) have been enrolled so far from all 28 Indian states and 4 out of 8 Union Territories. Reports from SMs and CHOs indicate personal transformation, increased confidence in CHOs to perform their 3 roles as Clinician, Public Health Specialist and Manager and enhanced quality of service delivery in AB-HWCs.
The partnership is an initiative aimed at enhancing and scaling pre-service education and continuous learning opportunities for health professionals in India and Kenya. Through partnerships with various institutions from these two countries and Denmark, we seek to improve the quality of health professions education through research collaboration, knowledge sharing, training activities, course and content co-production, and mentoring. A special focus is on educational research, academic development, and the use of online and blended teaching and learning modalities when redesigning and developing new courses.
In these unprecedented times of the Covid Pandemic, the department ran 3 courses to help health professionals as well as the community to combat it correctly. There is an online Basic course as well as an Advanced blended learning course (critical care included) for doctors, nurses and allied health professionals) and a “Covid Suraksha” course for community volunteers. These courses are not live at present.
