North East Teaching Public Health Network (NETPHN)
NETPHN's Strategic Priorities:
- Developing public health curricula through higher and further education
- Developing the capacity and capability of public health educators
- Promoting healthy universities and colleges
Visit our Priority work areas section on the left for details of the work we're doing.
Our purpose
Bringing together education providers with the public-sector workforce and workforce planners to increase capacity to improve health in its wider sense.
Improving public health through education
NETPHN is one of nine regional Teaching Public Health Networks (TPHNs) in England developed by the Department of Health. The networks were established in response to the need for a much greater awareness of public health across wider groups in the workforce, if health inequalities are to be tackled successfully.
The main aim of each network is to increase both public-health educator capacity (within academia and practice) and the breadth and depth of learners’ exposure to public health, through strengthening the public-health content of curricula and ensuring its relevance to specific disciplines. This includes not just those groups traditionally exposed to public-health education (that is, public-health specialists and practitioners), but anyone whose work contains elements of public health.
The wider public-health workforce includes those at operational level who can influence the public’s health through their work, such as care assistants, hairdressers, catering assistants in schools, as well as those at the strategic level, such as chief executives, directors of finance and commissioning and town planners. The groups extend well beyond the health service and include, particularly, local authority staff and the third sector.
NETPHN aims to embed public-health-relevant skills in undergraduate, postgraduate and CPD curricula.
A NETPHN Steering Group provides expert advice and support and includes representatives from key partnership organisations including higher education, further education, primary care trusts, the North East Strategic Health Authority, Skills for Health, and Government Office North East.
Accountability
The North East Teaching Public Health Network is jointly accountable to the Department of Health and the North East Strategic Health Authority via a service level agreement with NHS North East, and reports back on progress in meeting its strategic priorities to the Board of the School of Public Health.
