Background
The Ministry of Health (MoH) in partnership with Makerere University School of Public Health (MakSPH) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S CDC) is implementing the Uganda Public Health Fellowship Program (UPHFP), an initiative to develop the next generation of public health leadership for Uganda. The goal of this program is to develop a competent workforce by learning-through-service and responding to real public health problems of Uganda.
The UPHFP, which is housed in the Uganda National Institute of Public Health (UNIPH), is offered in six tracks, namely: Field Epidemiology; Laboratory Leadership; Health Informatics; Health Economics (Prevention Effectiveness), Implementation Science, and Monitoring and Evaluation. Currently, only the Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Leadership Tracks are operational. The Health Informatics track is in an advanced stage of planning for its commencement.
The Field Epidemiology Track is a 2-year training-through-service program in applied epidemiology and public health leadership. Fellows develop competencies by providing valuable public health services to the Ministry of Health and District Health Teams; 80% of the fellow’s time will be spent on field projects with supervision and mentorship provided by MoH, U.S. CDC. and UNIPH, with 20% spent in interactive didactic training.
Competency domains include field epidemiology (Public health surveillance, outbreaks investigations, and applied epidemiological studies), scientific and non-scientific communication, public health programming (including cost analysis studies, burden of disease estimation, and designing Quality Improvement projects), management and leadership. Fellows will prove competency by completing a portfolio of projects in each of these domains. Fellows will serve in priority technical units of the MoH or relevant affiliated institutions to complete this portfolio under the supervision and mentorship of national and international subject-area experts.