DISTANCE EDUCATION - A STRATEGY FOR TRAIN ING IN HEALTH-SERVICES ADMINISTRATION

The training of health services administration professionals in Mexico has faced two main challenges. One the one hand, the need to have rec ognition as professionals, and on the other hand the difficulty to tra in individuals that are currently working as health care administrator s. This article emphasizes a distance education strategy as an alterna tive to provide training to these type of personnel. A proposal develo ped as the second phase of the Advance Education Program on Health Adm inistration (PROASA-II) is presented. It has the objective to strength en local institutions to take responsibility for the future trainings of their professional administration staff. Once that this is started, we can begin to talk abourt the creation of a national system of manp ower training in health administration and public health, that will su pport the decentralization and the appropriate training of the differe nt levels of health administration in the country.