University of Ghana, School of Public Health, Ghana

The School of Public Health was established in 1994, in response to a growing demand for a cadre of public health practitioners who will provide leadership in Public Health reforms in the country primarily to train Public Health Practitioners. The training received will enable them perform effectively at District, Regional and National levels within governmental, quasi-governmental, non-governmental and private organisations. The programmes are also available to non-health personnel whose activities have an impact on the environment and public health. Properly trained Public Health personnel will be able to offer technical leadership in critical disciplines such as Population Family and Reproductive health, Maternal and Child Health/Family Planning, Environmental Diseases Control, Occupational Health, Social & Behavioural Sciences, Health Information, Training Research and Planning and in the running of specific disease control programmes such as Malaria, AIDS, Leprosy and Onchocerciasis Control Programmes.

Currently there are 6 Departments in the School: Biological, Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences; Biostatistics; Epidemiology and Disease Control; Health Policy, Planning & Management; Population, Family and Reproductive Health and the Department of Social & Behavioural Sciences. The School runs three (3) programmes, namely, Master of Public Health (MPH), Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Health Informatics, Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Applied Health Social Science, Master of Philosophy in Public Health (M.Phil) Master of Philosophy (M. Phil.) in Applied Epidemiology and Disease Control, Master of Philosophy (M. Phil.) in Applied Health Social Science and Doctor of Philosophy in Public Health (PhD). The school also runs Short courses in Social Mobilisation for Health and Development and Occupational Safety and Health Short course. At this point, it might be useful to indicate the School´s new direction to staff development, particularly in the area of teaching and research. The Philosophy of the School is to operate as a "School without Walls" with semi-autonomous status, but with a close working relationship with the existing Schools and Faculties of the University. It is one of the three Public Health Institutions in Africa that subscribes to the philosophy of school without walls meaning that attempts are made to achieve an optimum mix of classroom and fieldwork. The School admitted its first batch of students for the MPH programme in October 1994. In addition to its range of academic programmes, the School offers short certificate courses on specific health issues.

The overarching mission of the School however, is to train Public Health Practitioners who will be leaders and change agents for health development in Africa and Ghana in particular. It is believed that this mission cannot be achieved without a vigorous outreach in the communities. The School has therefore through collaboration with the Ministry of Health established field sites to enhance the field component of the programme. Furthermore, in order to practicalise and emphasize on cross disciplinary approach to teaching and learning, the School has maintained a core of staff with critical and localised knowledge assisted by Part-time staff drawn from already existing departments in the University and others from organisations and agencies including the Ministry of Health/Ghana Health Services.

The vision of the school is to promote knowledge and be lead advocates for needed Public Health reforms in Ghana and its missions is to train Public Health Practitioners who will be leaders and change agents for health development in Ghana in particular and in the wider African context.

The objectives of the school are to produce Public Health Practitioners who will be able to provide effective leadership, diagnose community health problems, plan and organise effective measures against these problems; undertake policy research, especially at the policy level into Public Health issues of national as well as local importance; and provide Public and Health Extension Services.

The mandate of the SPH is in Pursuit of Academic Excellence in Health, Education, Research and Policy.

Ebenezer Afari-Kumah is a part-time lecturer with the Department of Biostatics and Department of Information Systems at the University of Ghana Business School. Afari-Kumah holds an MBA with specialisation in Management Information Systems. He is currently a PhD student at the Open University of Malaysia/Accra Institute of Technology. His Research interest includes Health informatics, Evaluation of Health Management information Systems, Data warehousing and Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) and Business Informatics.

Dr Richmond Aryeetey is a Lecturer and acting Head of Department of the Biostatistics Department of the University of Ghana. He has been of the school of Public Health faculty since 2007. Dr Aryeetey is trained as Public Health Nutritionists. However, he has had extensive experience and exposure in ICT applications to health data management and assessments in research and also in extension. Dr Aryeetey obtained his PhD from Iowa State University after having his Master of Public Health Degree from the University Of Ghana School Of Public Health. Previously, he has worked as data manager for the Demographic Surveillance System site at Dodowa. Both within and outside Ghana, He has facilitated short courses that trained health and development workers in ICT applications for health care and research including training the use of CDC´s EPI INFO and WHO´s Anthro softwares. Dr Aryeetey has also performed assessment of the health data management system in Ghana including a recent assessment of the routine health data system for UNICEF, Ghana.