Public health education post-COVID-19: a proposal for critical revisions

Addressing the pandemic requires not only a biomedical approach but also incorporating a broader social sciences approach to health, and most fundamentally, listening and learning from existing diverse communities and health systems, flexibility and capacity to work across sectors, and recognition of social justice, equity and human rights as basic principles, while undertaking public health actions in diverse contexts. The infodemic has been linked to growing vaccine hesitancy against the COVID-19 vaccine and public anger and anxieties against preventive measures such as lockdowns.3 4 While health communication is central to public health education, it has often not kept up with the incredibly fast-paced changes in technology and social media. [...]sometimes the assumption that top-down communication from experts will prompt behaviour change persists.5 However, the power of online communication is that it is unmediated, peer distributed, spread through storytelling with an emotional pull, and is customisable messaging or memeification.6 Coupled with this is the growing disregard and distrust of experts and increasingly violent rhetoric employed against them.7 We fear that such rapid and revolutionary changes may be simply far ahead of what is traditionally taught in many schools of public health. [...]we propose the development of expertise in learning and application of technologies in collection of data, synthesis of available information and dissemination of decisions in a timely manner. [...]we believe that a priority setting and resource allocation should become core to any public health curriculum.