Educating the public health workforce: Issues and challenges

Background: In public health, as well as other health education contexts, there is increasing recognition of the transformation in public health practice and the necessity for educational providers to keep pace. Traditionally, public health education has been at the postgraduate level; however, over the past decade an upsurge in the growth of undergraduate public health degrees has taken place. Discussion: This article explores the impact of these changes on the traditional sphere of Master of Public Health programs, the range of competencies required at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and the relevance of these changes to the public health workforce. It raises questions about the complexity of educational issues facing tertiary institutions and discusses the implications of these issues on undergraduate and postgraduate programs in public health. Conclusion: The planning and provisioning of education in public health must differentiate between the requirements of undergraduate and postgraduate students – while also addressing the changing needs of the health workforce. Within Australia, although significant research has been undertaken regarding the competencies required by postgraduate public health students, the approach is still somewhat piecemeal, and does not address undergraduate public health. This paper argues for a consistent approach to competencies that describe and differentiate entry-level and advanced practice

Clinical Utilities of Peripheral Blood Gene Expression Profiling in the Management of Cardiac Transplant Patients

Cardiac allografts induce host immune responses that lead to endomyocardial tissue injury and progressive graft dysfunction. Inflammatory cell infiltration and myocyte damage characterize acute cellular rejection (ACR) that presents episodically in either a subclinical or symptom-associated manner. Sampling of the endomyocardium by transvenous biopsy enables pathologic grading using light microscopic criteria to distinguish severity based on the focality or diffuseness of inflammation and associated myocyte injury. Monitoring for ACR utilizes endomyocardial biopsy in conjunction with history and physical examination and assessment of allograft function by echocardiography. However, procedural and interpretive issues limit the diagnostic certainty provided by endomyocardial biopsy. The dynamic profiling of genes expressed by peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) enables quantitative assessments of intracellular mRNA whose levels fluctuate during systemic alloimmune responses. Gene expression profiling of PBMCs using a multi-gene ACR classifier enables the AlloMap® molecular expression test to distinguish moderate to severe ACR (p = 0.0018) in heart transplant patients. The AlloMap test provides molecular insights into a patient's risk for ACR by distilling the aggregate expression levels of its informative genes into a single score on a scale of 0 to 40. The selection of a score as a threshold value for clinical decision-making is based on its associated negative predictive value (NPV), which ranges from 98 to 99% for values in three post-transplant periods: >2 to ≤6 months, > 6to ≤ 12 months, and >12 months. Scores below the threshold value rule out ACR, while those above suggest increased ACR risk. Incorporating the AlloMap test into immunomonitoring protocols provides an opportunity for clinicians to enhance patient care and to define its role in immunodiagnostic strategies to optimize the clinical outcomes of heart transplant recipients. This summary highlights the concepts presented in an invited presentation at a conference focused on Immunodiagnostics and Immunomonitoring: From Research to Clinic, in San Diego, CA on November 7, 2006

An integrative framework for planning and conducting Non-Intervention, Reproducible, and Open Systematic Reviews (NIRO-SR)

Most of the commonly used and endorsed guidelines for systematic review protocols and reporting standards have been developed for intervention research. These excellent guidelines have been adopted as the gold-standard for systematic reviews as an evidence synthesis method. In the current paper, we highlight some issues that may arise from adopting these guidelines beyond intervention designs, including in basic behavioural, cognitive, experimental, and exploratory research. We have adapted and built upon the existing guidelines to establish a complementary, comprehensive, and accessible tool for designing, conducting, and reporting Non-Intervention, Reproducible, and Open Systematic Reviews (NIRO-SR). NIRO-SR is a checklist composed of two parts that provide itemised guidance on the preparation of a systematic review protocol for pre-registration (Part A) and reporting the review (Part B) in a reproducible and transparent manner. This paper, the tool, and an open repository (https://osf.io/f3brw/) provide a comprehensive resource for those who aim to conduct a high quality, reproducible, and transparent systematic review of non-intervention studies

USE OF HIGH SURFACE NANOFIBROUS MATERIALS IN MEDICINE

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