University of São Paulo: Specialization Course in Public Health at USP is reformulated for distance mode

The Public Health Specialization course, the oldest at USP’s Faculty of Public Health (FSP), has been reformulated for the distance learning modality and offers, until March 20, 180 vacancies to graduates from any area of ​​knowledge, from Brazil or abroad. Interested parties can obtain information in this public notice and start the application process at this link .

Created in 1928 by FSP founder Geraldo de Paula Souza, the course underwent a reformulation in 2014 and, after the experience of two editions in the blended mode, will offer activities through a Virtual Learning Environment (AVA), created especially for the course, from August 15, 2022 to September 30, 2023. More information can be obtained on the page of the FSP Culture and Extension Commission .

There will be seven disciplines in the current format and the classes will be organized into Thematic Units (UT) developed synchronously or asynchronously, consisting of video classes, exercises and other theoretical and practical activities, during the period of 13 months. The subjects that make up the course are as follows: Science, Space, Time and Public Health; History, Ethics, Justice and Education in Public Health; Biostatistics and Vital Statistics; Epidemiology; Health, Environment and Surveillance; Intersectoral Management and Public Policies; Economics and Management of Public Health.

The cost for the student is R$ 2,700.00 in 12 installments of R$ 250.00, in addition to registration and enrollment fees. 10% of the vacancies will be offered free of payment to the student, faculty and technical-administrative body and to other approved candidates. There will be a tutor for up to 12 students, in a total of approximately 18 tutors, who will help those responsible for the disciplines and accompany the course participants in the elaboration of the TCC and also in the activities and virtual forums.

A webinar on March 7, at 5:30 pm, broadcast on the FSP YouTube channel, will mark the resumption of the course, after a moment of pause for its reformulation, and will have the participation of the course coordinators and two former students. that were formed in previous years.

Course resumption and new coordination

The new edition is coordinated by professors Paulo Capel Narvai and Marco Akerman, both from the Department of Policy, Management and Health; in addition to Ana Estela Haddad, vice-coordinator, linked to the Faculty of Dentistry (FO), and Ewout Ter Haar, from the Department of Experimental Physics at the Institute of Physics (IF), all from USP. According to Akerman, the pandemic was the stimulus that was needed for the course to become 100% distance learning. “We learned from the pandemic that the virtual environment is more likely to capture people from the most diverse places. Now, without the impediments of travel and ticket costs for face-to-face moments, we hope to have students from all Brazilian states and even from other countries, although the course is entirely offered in Portuguese”, he says.

The course had its first group formed in December 1929 and trained hundreds of health workers for Brazil and Latin America. “In its early days, people came from different countries, including Portuguese-speaking ones from other continents. They were usually doctors, dentists, nurses or engineers. The course has always had this multi-professional characteristic. In recent years, it has trained lawyers, administrators, publicists, journalists, engineers, in short, professionals who for some reason need public health knowledge to work in their field of work”, says Narvai.