A new programme for public health training in Hungary

The emergence of democracy has led the countries of central and eastern Europe to undertake a fundamental reappraisal of their public health services and training requirements. This paper describes the thinking behind the changes under way in Hungary. These involve a radical departure from the way public health medicine was taught. It was traditionally divided between departments of hygiene and social medicine. The hygiene departments had a very narrow focus, mainly on aspects of communicable disease epidemiology, food hygiene, occupational hygiene, environmental hygiene and toxicology. Social medicine was principally concerned with health service management, although more recently it has included some non-communicable disease epidemiology. A new postgraduate training programme in public health medicine will be developed in which non-communicable disease epidemiology will be strengthened and subjects such as health economics and health promotion will be incorporated. Training will take place in a multi-disciplinary setting and additional programmes for other professional groups will be developed and Integrated.