Pattern of road traffic injuries among individuals attending a rural health training center in Tamil Nadu

Background: Road traffic injuries (RTIs) are a leading public health problem. Approximately 1.3 million people die each year as a result of road traffic crashes as of June 2021. RTIs cause considerable economic losses to individuals, their families, and to nations as a whole. 93% of the world's fatalities on the roads occur in low-and middle-income countries. This study aimed to assess the pattern of RTIs among individuals attending a rural health training center in Tamil Nadu.Methods: The present study was a record based cross sectional study comprising of 113 patients who attended an outpatient department in rural health training center in Tamil Nadu from January 2021 to June 2021.We collected socio-demographic data (age and sex) and pattern of injuries from the database. We entered data in excel sheet and analyzed using SPSS version 21.0.Results: Mean (±SD) age of the patients was 34.2(±18.46) years. Most common pattern of injury was abrasion 98 (86.7%), followed by contusion 28 (24.8%) and laceration 14 (12.4%) respectively. Most RTIs required dressing 106 (93.8%) while 13 (11.5%) needed suturing.Conclusions: The present study showed that RTIs were more common in the younger male population. Abrasion was the most common type of injury reported.

A Pipeline to Increase Public Health Diversity: Describing the Academic Enrichment Components of the Summer Public Health Scholars Program

A public health workforce that reflects the increasing diversity of the U.S. population is critical for health promotion and to eliminate persistent health disparities. Academic institutions must provide appropriate education and training to increase diversity in public health professions to improve efforts to provide culturally competent care and programs in the most vulnerable communities. Reaching into the existing talent pool of diverse candidates at the undergraduate level is a promising avenue for building a pipeline to advanced training and professional careers in the field of public health. The Summer Public Health Scholars Program (SPHSP) at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) is a 10-week summer internship program with a mission to increase knowledge and interest in public health and biomedical sciences. Funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Undergraduate Public Health Summer Programs, sponsored by the CDC’s Office of Minority Health and Health Equity, SPHSP aims to pipeline underrepresented students into public health graduate programs and careers by providing mentorship, academic enrichment, professional development, and field-based placements. The SPHSP is uniquely positioned to offer scholars a program that exposes them to core public health training components through the joint effort of all four CUIMC schools: public health, dentistry, nursing, and medicine. Here, we describe the program’s academic enrichment components, which provide advanced and multifaceted public health training opportunities. We discuss the impacts of the program on student outcomes and lessons learned in developing and refining the program model.

Tailoring Recruitment and Outreach Strategies for Underrepresented Students in Public Health Pipeline Programs

Studies have shown that racial and ethnic minority health professionals are more likely than those in the majority to work in predominantly underserved, largely minority communities. Increasing the pool of underrepresented racial and ethnic professionals could help reduce health disparities. Summer programs giving minority students public health training and experiences can increase the number who enter the health professions. This article describes recruitment strategies for obtaining a diverse pool of applicants for such a program as part of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funded multisite undergraduate training program intended to increase the diversity of the public health workforce. The recruitment strategies used included institutional linkages, collaborative partnerships, and interpersonal contacts. No one strategy was more effective; however, Hispanic/Latinas were more likely to be recruited through institutional linkages, but less likely to be recruited through interpersonal contacts than other female groups. Understanding successful recruitment strategies to achieve a diverse application pool for public health training programs is vital to achieve health equity.

Doctoral Students as Agents for Change: Shaping Our Public Health Training Environment

This reflective article describes how we, a trio of doctoral students, applied critical pedagogical approaches to identify gaps in our public health training, reflect on the value of our lived experiences and ancestral histories, and take action toward advancing change within our School of Public Health. Additionally, we argue that our future effectiveness in leading systemic change toward health justice requires our public health training institutions to deliver course content that addresses racism and other systemic forms of oppression, largely responsible for reproducing health inequities. We also reflect upon how our efforts to find spaces in which to critically engage with content related to social and structural determinants of health transformed into a collaborative learning opportunity that has served to strengthen our skills as public health researchers, advocates, and future educators. We conclude by calling upon our schools of public health to take the lead in preparing the public health workforce of tomorrow for the challenges of addressing systemic causes of health inequities. Our goal is to share our experiences so that graduate students across public health training institutions may look to this piece as a concrete example of how we can shape our schools of public health to meet our needs.

Global Health Training Collaborations: Lessons Learned and Best Practices

Interest in global health training experiences among trainees from higher income countries has grown. The Working Group on Ethics Guidelines for Global Health Training (WEIGHT) clarified best practices in 2010 based on expert consensus. These guidelines address both balancing priorities in international partnerships and local sustainability concerns related to short-term experiences. However, the guidelines can be difficult to implement in actual practice. Because our organization predated the availability of these consensus guidelines, we reviewed our current set of practices for hosting service–learning programs at our rural Ugandan clinic for adherence to the WEIGHT guidelines. The discrete activities and standardized processes developed over 10 years of hosting experiences were grouped into broader hosting categories, with consensus among the hosting and sending volunteer coordinators of our non-governmental organization partnership. These practices were then mapped to the WEIGHT guidelines. We found our implementation strategies map these guidelines into a clear checklist of actions that can be used by coordinators involved in global health training programs. We include some of the historical reasons that led to our current processes, which may help other partnerships identify similar practice gaps. We anticipate that this action-oriented checklist with historical context will help accomplish the difficult implementation of best practices in global health training collaborations.

Real Workload-Situated Training in COVID-19 Prevention of General Practice Residents in China: A Situated Cognition Study

Objective: The participation of general practice (GP) residents in COVID-19 prevention and control tasks touched workload participation in public health and disease prevention and control and was also a rare, valuable training experience for the residents and research material for medical education. This experience contributed to the understanding of three key points: First, was the content of the COVID-19 prevention task suited to them, or did it overload them in the present? Second, their competence in the COVID-19 prevention task reflected whether the early medical school training was sufficient or not. Third, what can be drawn from this study to promote public health training in the future? This study aimed to explore these issues by conducting a real epidemic situated training (REST) program.Methods: A situated cognition study was designed that included situational context design, legitimate peripheral participation, and the construction of a community of practice. The Task Cognitive Load Scale (NASA-TLX Scale) and self-developed questionnaires were adopted to conduct a questionnaire survey of resident doctors in a GP training program from West China Hospital of Sichuan University, and 183 questionnaires were collected. SPSS 23.0 statistical software was used for the statistical analysis of data.Results: The NASA scale showed that the intensity of field epidemic prevention and control (training) was tolerable. In particular, there was statistical difference in the cognitive load intensity of training before and after the epidemic occurred at different time points (P < 0.05). This shows that they were early trained and well-prepared before sudden outbreak of the COVID-19. Before the outbreak of the epidemic, the public health knowledge and training received came from undergraduate education (83.16%), early residents program training (69.47%), online self-study (49.16%), and continuing education (20.53%).Conclusion: Former medical school education and training at the regulatory training stage have a good effect and enable residents to master the skills required for epidemic prevention and control and to physically and mentally prepare for the task. After this stage, epidemic prevention and control training in real situations will make important contributions to the self-assessment and performance improvement of public health training.