Under the motto “Our goal: to deliver tools to health technicians,” the Spanish edition of the Pan American Health Organization’s Virtual Campus for Public Health (VCPH-PAHO) has launched a page focused on health technicians, based on the results of the first stage of the research project “Human Resources for Health in the Post-COVID-19 Era: Strengthening Capacities for Resilient Health Systems.”

In an interview with the Health Technicians Observatory, PAHO consultant María Isabel Duré explained that the new channel seeks to more accurately represent this “rich and diverse workforce.” “The PAHO Virtual Campus for Public Health aims to reach all health workers with its educational offerings. We know we have many users from medicine and nursing. The universe of health technicians is more diverse and heterogeneous. To better tailor our proposals to them, we need to understand them better and identify their preferences,” she said.

According to Duré, PAHO began this initiative by analyzing the VCPH user database and is now moving to more qualitative components of the project. “Once we had the data analysis results, we felt it was important to publish them and provide a space where updates on the project’s progress could be shared,” she commented. Duré believes that engaging with the public through the new page will support the research process on technicians in the region. “When information is shared openly, there is always feedback. We aim to understand the interests of health technicians in PAHO and the VCPH, as well as those of researchers or teams working on continuing health education for this workforce. We hope these groups will contribute their experience and additional information. We also want to establish a channel of communication with the technicians themselves to learn about their preferences and training needs,” she said.

Page Will Be Updated

The project, developed in partnership with the Joaquim Venâncio Polytechnic School of Health at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (EPSJV/Fiocruz), and with the participation of researchers from the Health Technicians Observatory, consists of two phases. Currently, the new page presents the results of the first phase (2023–2024), which focused on a detailed analysis of the VCPH course enrollees, their profiles, and training pathways. The second phase, currently underway and to be published soon, aims to identify and characterize the groups of technical workers in primary health care and determine the most effective educational and communication strategies to facilitate their access to the Virtual Campus.

According to Duré, EPSJV/Fiocruz developed an interview form to be sent to the target audience this May. There will also be qualitative interviews with key informants from countries where technicians have shown greater interest in VCPH courses. “We want to identify best practices that can be adapted to improve offerings in other countries. This is expected to take place between May and August, and updates will be posted on the page,” she added.

The consultant believes the new page could serve as a gateway to all of VCPH’s “highly diverse and free” educational offerings. She also invites researchers to explore it: “I don’t think there is much open information in Spanish on educational profiles within the universe of health technicians. This is rich data for researchers. The dashboard allows for a wide range of data cross-referencing,” she said.

Features

In addition to the Power BI dashboard, the new page includes infographics with data on the profile of technical users of the PAHO/WHO Virtual Campus for Public Health from 2018 to 2023, as well as the profile of countries with the highest number of technical users on the VCPH post-pandemic (2022–2023).

It also provides national-level data for Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, and Mexico.

In the section “Courses with the Highest Number of Technical Users on the VCPH Post-Pandemic 2022–2023,” users can access both general and specific course data, such as usage characteristics for individual courses like Diagnosis and Clinical Management of Dengue, Fundamentals of Palliative Care, Implementation of the HEARTS Technical Package in PHC, Accurate Automatic Blood Pressure Measurement, and Basic Precautions: Hand Hygiene.

Finally, the interactive summary Health Technicians on the Virtual Campus for Public Health and the final report Health Technicians on the Virtual Campus for Public Health are already available on the page.