Public Health Consortium

The Public Health Consortium was formed in light of the unprecedented COVID-19 Public Health crisis facing our communities in Bangladesh and around the world. It was noticed that COVID has not only exposed chronically ill-equipped health systems worldwide but also brought into question the capacity of higher education institutions of Public Health to develop the competent professionals urgently required to tackle such health challenges. It has forced us to more critically reflect upon our collective role within our national community to develop Public Health professionals to address Bangladesh’s priority health needs. Thus, the Public Health Consortium, consisting of 18 universities, was formed to discuss our own health context and support each other, collaborate and innovate our own home-grown practical and feasible solutions. The Consortium is led by our Dean Dr Sabina Faiz Rashid and Learning and Design Consultant Mikhail I. Islam.

The first meeting was held in August 2020 to collaboratively discuss, examine and develop solutions around COVID-19 and the involvement of university-based Schools/Departments of Public Health. It gave the Consortium the opportunity to critically reflect upon our collective role within our national community to develop Public Health professionals to address Bangladesh’s priority health needs. After the first two sessions, the meetings now have adopted a workshop-styled approach where each of the collaborators presents their current research and everyone in the Consortium brainstorms ideas to make the research more community-centric.

Over the time period, though few of the schools could not continue to be a part of the Public Health Consortium, it now consists of 14 universities