Imperial College MPH

The Department of Primary Care and Public Health hosted a visit from Professor Yao and colleagues from the First Teaching Hospital, Xinjiang Medical University. Xinjiang is located in far west region of China, adjacent to several middle Asian countries. It faces a number of health challenges, including a rising prevalence of risk factors from diseases such as diabetes and coronary heart disease, Professor Yao led a group of 12 senior staff who visited the department of 24 June 2013. The aims of the visit were to discuss collaboration in a range of areas, including: healthcare management, workforce training and development, diabetes prevention and management, medical imaging, translational medicine, and a PhD exchange programme. During their visit, they met a number of senior staff from the department, including Professor Azeem Majeed and Professor Salman Rawaf.

The Department recently hosted a delegation from the Brazilian Ministry of Health's Secretariat for Health Professional Training and Management. The delegation, led by Vice-Minister Fernando Menezes met with Dr Graham Easton, and two Honorary Clinical Research Fellows, Dr Stephanie Lewis and Dr Ashwin Anenden, to discuss Foundation and GP Specialist Training in the UK. Dr Matthew Harris led and organized the session on behalf of the Department of Health, which has a Memorandum of Understanding with the Brazilian Ministry of Health to exchange technical expertise across a wide range of health-related activity. Vice-Minister Menezes described the training programmes as comprehensive and impressive, and thought it would be very helpful in exploring the potential to develop similar approaches in Brazil.

In the first  study  of its kind, former MPH student Dr Richard Pinder and colleagues found that hospitals in England with lower mortality rates were more likely to have members of staff satisfied with the quality of care they provide. The findings suggest that staff satisfaction could be used as an early warning system to help spot more serious institutional failings, reported  The Daily Telegraph . "If you want to choose between two hospitals, knowing that 98 per cent of doctors and nurses working there would recommend their hospital, compared with 60 per cent elsewhere is a useful thing to know," said Dr Pinder. The study was published in the journal  BMJ Quality & Safety .

Countries across the Eastern Mediterranean Region face unprecedented health challenges, and are buffeted by demographic change, a dual disease burden, rising health costs, and the effects of ongoing conflict and population movements – exacerbated in the near-term by instability arising from recent political upheaval in the Middle East. However, health agencies in the region are not well positioned to respond to these challenges because of a dearth of good quality health research. An article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine by MPH Tutor Professor Salman Rawaf presents an assessment of the current state of health research systems across the Eastern Mediterranean based on publicly available literature and data sources. The review finds that – while there have been important improvements in productivity in the Region since the early 1990s – overall research performance is poor with critical deficits in system stewardship, research training and human resource de