ENSP' s presentation

ENSP (National School of Public Health)

ENSP (Ecole nationale de la santé publique), shortly to become EHESP (Ecole des hautes études en santé publique) is France’s leading institution providing initial professional and continuing training for seniors managers in the public health, health care and social services sectors.

Initial professional training programmes

Based in Rennes, ENSP dispenses initial professional training for public health service management professionals, on behalf of the state, local government and public health and social services institutions. The different programmes offered are:

• Inspector of health and welfare programmes
• Environmental health engineer
• Public health medical officer
• Public health pharmacist officer
• Hospital director
• Health/social services facility director
• Social services facility director
• Health care director
• Sanitary engineer
• Schools medical officer

The annual student intake for these long courses is around 400.

In recent years ENSP has also introduced specialist Masters courses run in partnership with French universities. Subjects covered include:

• Law, health and social welfare
• Health education in schools
• Welfare policy management
• Assessment and management of environmental health risks
• Health care promotion and management of health and welfare services
• Processing of statistics and demographic data
• Water chemistry and microbiology
• Biomedical equipment and facilities

Training and research

ENSP also organises several short courses (under 9 months) to train professionals such as hospital administrative officers, social work advisers, biomedical engineers, regional labour inspectorate physicians, and IT and organisation managers. About 1,000 students enrol on these courses every year.

From its headquarters in Rennes and unit in Paris, ENSP also offers an extensive range of continuing education courses attended by over 5,000 health professionals each year.

ENSP also has a research and expertise capability through its three teaching departments and its health and welfare policy laboratory (Lapss) and health care and environmental research laboratory (Léres). For the past ten it has also run France’s Public Health Database (BDSP), which became free of charge in 2006.

A range of international cooperation programmes
Since its founding in 1946, Europe and the international arena have been a natural focus of ENSP’s activity. Each year, the school’s teaching, research and administrative staff conduct some 400 assignments abroad and host 40 or so delegations.

ENSP also plays and active role in several European projects:

• Europhamili (European management training course for health service professionals) -

  website: www.europhamili.org

• Manahealth (pilot initiative to promote networking and information sharing between health and welfare professionals across Europe)
• “PH-AACR” Leonardo Da Vinci Project to set up a European Agency for Accreditation of Public Health Education.

• Since 2006, l'ENSP runs the Europubhealth Masters course in partnership with several French and foreign universities and selected under the European Commission’s Erasmus Mundus programme.

  Site: www.europubhealth.org.

It also runs cooperation and sustainable development programmes with countries such as Poland, Croatia, Romania, Quebec, Morocco, Chile, Rwanda and the Ivory Coast.

These Europe- and international-focused activities are coordinated by the school’s Directorate for International Affairs which has a staff of 15.