The Union’s International Management Development Programme has become a highly regarded resource for public health management training over its first decade. Some 4,000 managers from around the world have benefited from IMDP courses, which are designed to build skills in key areas from budgeting and strategic planning to communications and supply-chain management.
“Originally, we created IMDP because we saw that national TB programme managers, who were usually clinicians, were under increasing pressure to handle complex management issues”, says José Luis Castro, one of IMDP’s founders and now Interim Executive Director of The Union. “The goal of IMDP has been to help them gain competence and confidence In their ability to manage their programmes, as well as treat patients, since good clinical results are directly linked to effective management”.
From its beginnings in 2004, IMDP has grown to a curriculum of 10 core courses that are designed to address the needs of public health managers with a focus on the challenges faced by those working in limited-resource settings. Current course offerings include:
- Leading Management Teams
- Monitoring and Evaluation
- Strategic Planning & Innovation
- Project Management
- Budget and Financial Management
- Mass Media & Communications
- Influencing, Networking & Partnership
- Supply-Chain Management
- Management of Managers
- Training of Trainers
In addition, with support from the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, IMDP will offer 10 courses in 2014 for tobacco control managers in countries with a high burden of tobacco use: China, India, Mexico, Bangladesh and Indonesia. While these courses use tobacco control case studies and examples, they are also open to – and applicable to – those in other fields of public health.
“Management is management”, says Thomas Stuebner, who became the Director of IMDP in 2013. “The basic skills needed for successful project management are the same whether your project is the roll-out of a new TB diagnostic tool or a vaccination campaign.
IMDP also offers seminars, conference workshops and post-graduate courses and customised “fast-track” courses targeted to specific competencies for in-country trainings.