The Role of Schools of Public Health: Training, research, advocacy and policy

1
The Role of Schools of Public Health Training,
research, advocacy and policy

• OSI Seminar - Varna, Bulgaria
• Presenter Don McVinney
• Lecturer, Columbia University School of Social
  Work, U.S.
• National Director of Education and Training, Harm
  Reduction Coalition, U.S.
• mcvinney_at_harmreduction.org

2
Education and Training

• Teaching Adult learning (androgogy) versus
  childhood learning (pedagogy)
• Adults have life experience to draw upon their
  own resources and experiences

3
Education

• Involves critical thinking
• Opening out of the mind
• Understand the meanings behind social problems
• The process of thinking is an end in itself
• Connections may not be made about what one is
  learning until years later
• More unpredictable outcome than training
• Sometimes students initially feel less skilled
  because the educator calls into question what
  they presume to know (unlearning then learning)
• More future-oriented
• Setting Classrooms in schools of higher
  education, such as universities

4
Training

• Providing practical skills that one can employ
  readily and immediately in ones work
• More factual
• More rigid approach to learning
• Narrowing in of information that is most
  relevant and useful
• More present-focused
• Settings In the community in-service workshops
  community-based organizations

5
Types of Training

• Professional, para-professional or staff
  (volunteer or paid) training and development
• Goals
• Give participants new knowledge and information
• Provide or enhance skills for professionals to be
  or to become more effective in their work
• Clarification of values (example attitudes about
  drug users)
• Popular education (Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of
  the Oppressed)
• Providing knowledge and skills to clients and
  consumers empowerment approach

6
Types of Knowledge

• Specialized knowledge For example licit and
  illicit drugs
• Goal Increase competence related to vulnerable
  populations or to individuals
• Tacit knowledge intuitive and intangible
  approach
• Professional use of self (social work)
• Postmodern perspective Many ways of knowing
• Philosophically, is intervention an art or a
  science? (logical positivist versus postmodern
  debate)

7
The Need to Impart Knowledge The gap between
research and practice

• On the one hand, practice approaches may be
  several years behind research
• Costs of implementation may be prohibitive
• There may be political rather than scientific
  motives for not promoting an effective
  intervention (example syringe exchange to reduce
  HIV infection)
• On the other hand, effective clinical
  interventions may be widely used in the community
  years before a research grant is written, funded,
  intervention studied, data analyzed, and
  disseminated (often to a limited audience)

8
The Gap Between Research and Practice

• Scientific advances are not being incorporated
  into practice interventions (Conclusion of
  report, 1998, Institute of Medicine, U.S.,
  Bridging the Gap Between Practice and Research)
• Hypotheses
• Lack of ability to communicate to community
  stakeholders effectively
• Few partnerships between academic researchers and
  policy makers to help communities see the
  benefits
• Political barriers Politicians may not be
  scientists
• Science is increasing debunked because it is a
  threat to people of faith who may have political
  capital

9
Research-Practice Disconnection

• Researchers/academics and practitioners in the
  community both have vast amounts of knowledge
• Knowledge explosion and access to information
  through the internet
• Often impossible for practitioners to keep up,
  even in their own field
• Little research is being done to study how
  information can be disseminated so-called
  technology transfer

10
Research and Practice A Two Way Street

• Greater understanding is needed about the
  different cultures that exist
• Often a separate knowledge base from which we
  work (scientific versus personal or experiential)
  can be bridged
• Terminology (scientific or vernacular) can be
  adapted
• Academics need to get out into the field more
• Community stakeholders need to be invited into
  the academy to share perspectives