Interuniversity collaborations: a model for sustainable specialised public health education programmes

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 global pandemic is one example of emergencies that highlight the need for a well-educated public health workforce. Educating specialist public health practitioners poses several challenges for educators, especially when low student, or appropriately qualified staff, numbers threaten viability of courses within individual universities. One solution is teaching programmes delivered through interuniversity collaborations. This study examines the features of two comparative case studies to explore how these correlate with barriers and enablers to sustainability. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social fields is then utilised to explore the impacts of external influences on interuniversity collaborations that determine their autonomy. A correlation between the purpose, membership, structure and leadership of specialised teaching collaborations and the mechanisms determining their autonomy is revealed and a model for achieving autonomy of interuniversity collaborations is outlined. Finally, a need to expand the use of collaborative specialist public health teaching programmes based on specialty disciplines is discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Interuniversity collaborations
• public health education
• barriers and enablers
• social fields
• sustainability

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank all those who participated in this study and Associate Professor Priscilla Robinson for her support and peer review of this paper. The author declares that they have no conflict of interest. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.