The Public Health Workforce Laboratorium (Laboratorium) is an expression of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) international activities in public health training.
The Laboratorium was conceived during the G20 Italian Presidency. Starting from a preliminary survey conducted among 27 countries to gather opinions on training in health care, the need for improved training in epidemiology, emergency management and infectious disease control for public health workers was highlighted.
With this aim, the Public Health Workforce Laboratorium was launched on January 27, 2021, and presented to delegates from G20 countries and International Organizations invited to the work of the G20 Health at four webinars (March 10, July 7, September 7, and October 20, 2021) organized as part of the Sherpa Track and the Health Working Group of the Italian Presidency.
Within the framework of the Italian Presidency of the G20, the proposal was acknowledged and endorsed by the Declaration of the G20 Health Ministers (Paragraph 23: Declaration of the G20 Health Ministers Rome, September 5-6, 2021) and by the Final Declaration of the Leaders of the G20 Countries on 31 October 2021 (Paragraph 8: G20 Rome Leaders' Declaration).
Its development led to the creation of two activities:
- ISS-G20 Laboratorium: International Courses
- ISS-G20 Laboratorium: Repository
The purpose of the Public Health Workforce Laboratorium is mainly aimed at acquiring new competencies and skills to integrate the more heterogeneous profiles of Public Health Officers in different health contexts, however confronted with common issues and needs in emergency preparedness and response.
Specifically, the ISS-G20 Laboratorium: International Courses is the section of the Laboratorium dedicated to international public health training courses at the ISS. The approach involves competence-oriented active learning (Problem Based Learning – PBL).
In addition, the ISS-G20 Laboratorium: Repository is a website where Public Health professionals can find news, documents, guidelines, and educational tools that are systematically collected and updated from influential and reliable international sources. The purpose is to make available to practitioners freely available resources, previously classified and evaluated for appropriateness in the field of emergency response and preparedness.
Main goals of the Public Health Workforce Laboratorium:
- support preparedness and adaptive response, resilience, and management of health emergencies, including in a resource-constrained context in low/middle income countries
- access predictive models, technical forecasting, and big data analysis
- promote the use of new technologies: digital health, tools, apps, mobile health
- problem-based learning methodology and skills; guided or self-directed education, baseline or lifelong learning, distance education
