Strengthening Capacity for Public Health Leadership and Decision-Making: The Contribution of Case-based Learning

The COVID-19 pandemic has refocused attention globally and in Canada on the capacities and performance of public health systems within larger government and non-government structures. Previously, our team studied how public health systems and decision-makers in Canada and other jurisdictions are organized and interact with other political and social actors, resulting in policies to respond to acute public health needs, such as COVID-19. Our approach focuses on the effect of institutions, politics, public health system organization, and governance (IPOG) on the public health response. Our proposal aims to strengthen the capacities of public health trainees and in-service public health decision-makers and practitioners to engage with these 'upstream' factors, in order to advance objectives of public health improvement in complex governmental and non-governmental environments. We hypothesize that these capacities can be strengthened through competency-focused education and practice interventions. Through the IPOG framework we focus on "governance" as decision-making process, which can be improved by greater preparation and skills in navigating organizational and political factors. We further hypothesize that problem-oriented, case-based teaching can strengthen competencies needed in this domain. Hence, in keeping with the 2021 PHAC report, we suggest that there is potential to improve the competencies for public health practitioners to interface with political leaders as well as engage with other key government and non-government actors. In partnership with knowledge users, the project will generate and apply new knowledge by outlining competency gaps pertaining to IPOG in public health training programs in Canada; develop, use, and evaluate teaching cases using multi-media video accompanied by a detailed teaching guide; and make them available as open-access resources. Keywords: Public Health, Competency, Teaching Cases, Public Health Trainees, Political, Government