An international team of public health experts evaluated the district health management capacity-building initiative of IPH in Tumkur. The team consisted of a mix of public health practitioners, researchers and pedagogists and met with participants of the tumkur programme as well as senior officials from health department of Government of Karnataka and the Karnataka Health Systems Development and Reforms Project (KHSDRP). The intervention in Tumkur consisted of 16 modules of contact sessions (classroom training) for District Health Officer, various programme officers, District Programme manager & Block Programme Manager under NRHM and PHC Medical Officers as well as hand-holding at their workplaces.
The team consisted of (in alphabetical order):
- Lai Jiang, Pedagogist, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp
- Tom Horee, Course coordinator of MPH programme, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp
- Vandana Prasad, National Convener, Public Health Resource Network, New Delhi, India
- Yongyuth Pongsupap, Senior health official, Government of Thailand
They mainly focused on coherence of the course, i.e. how the course was designed, course effectiveness and efficiency in the management of the course. The findings and suggestions of this external evaluation will help improve our understanding of how to organise programmes for capacity-building of district health managers and to effectively scale up the same course across the state/country.
