The Dean of the UGM Faculty of Medicine, Public Health and Nursing (FKKMK), Prof. Ova Emilia expressed the importance of increasing interprofessional collaboration and education of medical and health professions. This is needed to strengthen primary health services as the frontline of public health services.
She said strengthening the capacity of health resources is one of the important points to support improving the quality of primary health services. Therefore, through the process of quality medical and health professional education and supported by cross-professional education as well as by strengthening knowledge of population health, it is hoped that the quality of health services will improve in achieving public health status.
“The challenge for Indonesian medical and health professional education today is education based on needs and interests. Here the role of educational institutions is huge in preparing prospective graduates to work in the field. Not only producing competent graduates but also possessing a human spirit in handling health issues at the upstream/community level,” she explained on Monday (19/7).
Increasing interprofessional collaboration and education for strengthening primary health services will be discussed together by experts from various countries around the world at the international conference “The Network: Toward Unity for Health (TUFH) 2021” to be held on 20-23 July 2021 online. The conference entitled “Enhancing Interprofessional Collaboration and Learning for Strengthening Primary Health Care” will be attended by hundreds of academics and practitioners from Asia, Africa, America, Australia, and Europe. This year, the UGM FKKMK is trusted to host the TUFH conference again, having hosted it in the 1990s.
“Through this conference, we hope to increase the capacity of human resources that will exert an impact on improving the quality of health services and realizing health for everyone,” she said in an online press conference, welcoming the holding of the THUF international conference.
Executive Director of TUFH, Nicholas Torres, said that until now there has been no successful interprofessional collaboration among countries. However, efforts to increase interprofessional collaboration need to continue to realize better public health services.
“The achievement of interprofessional collaboration in various regions has not been 100 percent successful. Therefore, collaborations between health care professionals need to be further improved to enhance the quality of health services,” he said.
He hopes that efforts to improve the quality of health services will be discussed together at this international conference. In addition, it is also a platform to share research results related to interprofessional education, community-based education, social accountability, primary health services, and various educational innovations.
The Chairperson of the TUFH 2021 Committee, Prof. Gandes Retno Rahayu, explained that 300 people from various countries in the world will participate in the TUFH 2021 international conference. The conference presents four speakers, namely Prof. Ova Emilia, Yassein El Hussein, Donal Li, and Janet Grant.
This conference will not only discuss interprofessional education but various other issues. These include collaborations between communities in improving community health, social accountability in interprofessional education, overcoming the Covid-19 pandemic, and strengthening networks to improve health services for the community, including in rural areas.
