Mission, Vision and Strategy

Mission:
SMDP works with international partners to strengthen public health management training capacity in the developing world

Vision:
A global network of sustainable management development programs providing needed skills and competencies to public health program managers throughout the developing world.

Strategy:

SMDP works in partnership with international development agencies to help ministries of health in developing countries to strengthen public health management capacity through:

In-country Situational Analysis
Identify management skill and performance gaps; work with stakeholders and counterparts from local training institutions to create an action plan for faculty development and institution building.

Management for International Public Health (MIPH) Course
Develop faculty to enhance in-country management training capacity; expose participants to a variety of themes and materials with practical exercises.

In-country Technical Support
Provide support to MIPH Course graduates in areas such as conducting in-country training needs assessments, developing locally appropriate curricula, planning in-country workshops, and supervising in-country "management learning projects."

Sustainability
Work with counterpart institutions and the donor community to ensure the long-term sustainability of the program; address issues such as local funding for recurrent costs, integrating SMDP with other programs, and evaluating impact.

Guiding Principles

• Emphasize applied skills, not just theoretical knowledge.
• Training should be highly interactive and draw out personal experience to reinforce team learning.
• Incorporate public health examples to illustrate the use of management tools that may have originally been developed for industry or other sectors (e.g., TQM); keep examples relevant for developing country audiences.
• Provide lots of tips, practical aids, and tools that facilitate teaching the materials to others.
• Emphasize evidence-based decision-making in management. That is, objective, analytic, data-driven decisions produce more effective solutions than trial and error.
• Use applied field projects to reinforce classroom learning, multiply training benefits, and generate products that have a measurable impact on public health program goals.
• Provide post-course technical assistance to support alumni teaching efforts.
• Constantly solicit feedback through a variety of means (e.g, questionnaires, focus groups, external evaluations) and continuously strive to improve the content as well as the learning process.
• Provide post-training incentives to stimulate life-long learning, such as website access, regional networking between alumni, conferences, fellowship and career development opportunities.