WHO collaborating centres in the WHO European Region
For NCDs, “We are working with WHO collaborating centres for a range of topics for NCDs over a range of modalities in our Region,” said Dr Kremlin Wickramasinghe, WHO Regional Adviser for Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity.
In July 2023, a group of more than 10 WHO collaborating centres (CCs) culminated years of effort with an “In-focus” joint training course on noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).
The project was initiated in 2018 as a priority during the meeting of WHO CCs focused on NCDs. The course is developed for early- and mid-career NCD professionals, including researchers, policy-makers and postgraduate students. The course was initially conceptualized as a summer course, but became virtual due to COVID-19.
Around a third of WHO collaborating centres (270 out of more than 800) are located in 34 countries in the WHO European Region. The Region has the biggest number, and also some of the oldest WHO CCs. The first WHO CC was the Department of Biological Standardization at the State Serum Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, originally designated in 1948. The countries in the Region hosting the largest numbers of CCs are the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, the Russian Federation and Switzerland.
Two main activities for WHO CCs at the WHO Europe Region are training and evidence generation.
Examples given are of a largely multidisciplinary and multisectoral nature, such as trans fat and salt lab measurement, school health promotion, material development for policy dialogue and symposium, a digital tool to assess and monitor advertisements of unhealthy food to children, alcohol and tobacco interventions, physical activity measurement and policy analysis, cardiovascular diseases management, and monitoring and implementing research. Many WHO CCs have also supported implementation activities in other countries, including countries from other WHO regions.
To improve communication and boost networking, the WHO European Office conducts regular briefings and informal consultation for WHO CCs. Through regular briefings and leadership from the Regional Office, it shares their vision, announces milestones and gives updates. The briefings have “in focus” sessions, in which WHO CCs deep dive into the "what" and "how" in order to support the work of WHO and its implementation to the Member States.
Dr Petrus H. J. Lampe, Dutch leprologist sent by the World Health Organization, examines a patient while lecturing a group of health assistants on leprosy, its chronic nature in which patients need to access health care routinely, Myanmar, 1958.
Photo credit: WHO / Ernst Scheidegger.
Collaboration on the development of the course contents and delivery
Participating CCs from Germany, Italy, Portugal, Russian Federation, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, joined the planning and development of the course outline, while also using the needs assessment of the courses from the WHO European Office (list of participating CCs).
The course consists of 15 modules, each 3 hours in duration. The modules offer important knowledge and skills needed to achieve NCD global targets.The modules include:
- defining NCD problems and risk factors
- prevention strategies;
- interventions;
- implementation and evaluation;
- surveillance;
- NCD and climate change;
- data analysis and modelling; and,
- scientific writing and dissemination.
The special interest module consists of value-based health care, delivered by the Almazov National Medical Research Centre, a WHO Collaborating Centre on Cardiovascular Diseases, eHealth and value-based care, based in St Petersburg, Russian Federation. Learn more.
The course was released initially during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021/2022, and the second took place in 2022/2023. Fifty-eight (58) participants were selected out of around 2000 applicants, including 14 from the WHO African Region and 12 from other regions.
The joint course project has a dual impact in capacity building in participants including young researchers from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), also in strengthening the collaboration among WHO CCs. On the in-focus session, Professor Wolfgang Ahrens, Head, WHO Collaborating Centre, Division of Epidemiological Methods and Etiological Research, Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology (BIPS), Germany, led the NCD course collaborative project and shared his experience and perspective.
“I think we can take advantage of this kind of approach to work together in a more synergistic way,” said Professor Ahrens.
Training, trend and solutions for the future
Good quality training should be comprehensive, effective and tailored to cover the diverse topics and skills required to meet the needs of subgroups of staff. Training should be interactive, with time for group work and planning.
During the pandemic, the course format was largely virtual. For example, the HEARTS of NCD through OpenWHO and the NCD joint course developed by the 10 WHO CCs in Europe.
“Physical meetings can be an area for improvement,” said Professor Ahrens, reflecting on the joint NCD course and the feedback from the course participants. Some course projects now propose hybrid formats in which the first and last modules of a course are planned as face-to-face meetings, while the rest of the modules are delivered online. To enhance the effectiveness through solution-oriented approaches, participants are asked to join in the form of joint or individual projects on the topic, for instance, designing a study, conducting a review or a second data analysis, read more.
The WHO Eye care, vision impairment and blindness team trains vision screening using the new WHOeyes app, developed and piloted by WHO collaborating centres – Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital in Australia, and Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center in Sun Yat-sen University in China; Switzerland, 2023.
Photo credit: WHO / Pierre Albouy
Achieving related sustainable development goals (SDGs)
Countries must accelerate implementation to achieve SDG 3.4, which aims to reduce premature mortality from NCDs by one third by 2030, through prevention, treatment, and promoting mental health and well-being.
“WHO collaborating centres can play a major role through scaling-up of the development and use of massive open online courses,” said Donna Zilstorff, who organized briefings and informal consultations with groups of WHO collaborating centres in the WHO European Region. “Other good characteristics for more country impact,” she said, “include collaborating with a wide range of stakeholders at local levels from the start, and actively networking.”
WHO academy mass casualty management training, Greece, 2021.
Photo credt: WHO / G. Lymperopoulos
With advanced technology, there will be new modalities of developing and delivering courses, apps, multilingual and personalized learning programmes. The WHO Academy (https://www.who.int/about/who-academy) is committed to harnessing the capacity of new technologies such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence and augmented reality to deliver learning and to apply learning for impact.
Training in some NCD services may have better effectiveness with the aid of technology innovations. For instance, rehabilitation services (WHO has CCs for rehabilitation at Sirindhorn National Medical Rehabilitation Centre, Sun Yat-Sen University of Medical Sciences, University of Lucerne, University of Sydney ), specialized care, high-tech and minimally invasive surgery for cancer and other diseases (https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/30-10-2019-who-launches-collaborating-centre-on-cardiovascular-diseases-ehealth-and-value-based-care-in-st-petersburg).