Profile Of Cheshire & Merseyside As A Training Sub Programme

Details

1. Academic

The University of Liverpool runs the Master of Public Health course, which many of the trainees undertake in their first year. Regular academic fora are held at the University for registrars to present their work. This University also provides academic tutors for all the trainees in Cheshire and Merseyside. Several other universities in Cheshire and Merseyside have public health interests.

The North West Public Health Observatory is part of John Moores University in Liverpool. In addition, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, which is situated in central Liverpool, hosts seminars on Public Health issues, and offers training opportunities in the field of international health and infectious diseases.

2. Primary Care Trust placements & (post March 2013) Local Authority placements

Cheshire and Merseyside offers registrars training placements in a diverse mixture of Local Authorities and Primary Care Trusts, offering the potential to work in areas of affluence and deprivation and both urban and rural locations. For example, Liverpool offers registrars experience of the challenges of working to improve public health within a dense urban population, while, by contrast, East Cheshire offers registrars a different public health challenge of working to improve the health of a more rural population. The region also encompasses the industrial areas of Halton and St Helens and West Cheshire and coastal regions such as Sefton and the Wirral, all of which contain a diverse mixture of both deprived and affluent areas.

3. Other training opportunities

The Cheshire and Merseyside region offers trainees numerous other training opportunities, over and above what is on offer regionally and nationally.

• The Cheshire and Merseyside Health Protection Unit (soon to be part of Public Health England) offers training in the area of health protection, environmental public health and emergency planning. In addition, the Northwest Health Protection Agency provides the opportunity for trainees to become involved in regional epidemiology work.
• Merseyside and Cheshire Cancer Network allows registrars to become involved in the development of integrated care pathways, research and evaluation.
• The 'Cheshire & Merseyside Public Health Network’ (CHaMPs) co-ordinates public health development sessions on key topics such as health inequalities and health promotion, which Cheshire and Merseyside registrars can attend.
• The Clinical Practice Research Unit, based at the Wirral Hospital, provides registrars with the opportunity to experience practicing public health within an acute trust setting and become involved with commissioning NHS services.

July 2012