Accreditation of Schools of Public Health - Overview

The International Council for the Accreditation and Advancement of Public Health Education (ICAPHE) provides accreditation services grounded in a formative, non-prescriptive approach, shaped by the collective insights of the global public health education community.

Our processes support schools by recognising their qualities and encouraging continuous improvement. Rather than imposing rigid, highly prescriptive standards, ICAPHE encourages reflective practice and peer-led dialogue, ensuring that accreditation is a meaningful, developmental experience.

This community-driven model allows institutions to showcase their strengths both internally within their own organisations and also externally to prospective students and stakeholders, enhancing their reputations and visibility while also benefiting from shared learning.

Accreditation by ICAPHE serves not only as a mark of quality but also as a catalyst for ongoing growth, ensuring relevance and responsiveness to public health challenges across diverse contexts. We believe quality assurance should empower, not constrain, and our services are designed to build capacity, encourage innovation and support excellence in public health education worldwide.

GOALS

To recognise and enhance the quality of public health education offerings through a formative, community-driven process that supports continuous improvement.
To abide by international norms of good practice such as the European Standards and Guidelines (ESG) and the International Standards and Guidelines (INAAQHE) for quality assurance in higher education, while respecting the diversity of national and international education and public health systems.
To ensure all procedures are shaped and implemented by those with specialist knowledge and practical experience in both public health and accreditation.
To maintain an international scope that encourages diversity, relevance and contextual sensitivity in all accreditation activities.
To operate with transparency, integrity and without conflicts of interest, promoting trust and fairness throughout the process.
To create a space for bi-directional learning and dialogue between applicants and those conducting accreditation, encouraging mutual growth and shared understanding.
To deliver tangible benefits to applicants, educators, students and stakeholders, both through the reflective debate and the improvements the process may help to bring about.
To promote innovation and capacity-building, supporting institutions in responding to evolving public health needs locally and globally.
To ensure the advice and recommendations provided are practical and context-sensitive, aligning with the applicant’s specific needs, aspirations, and local or institutional realities.
To offer a supportive and sustained process, providing guidance and engagement throughout the full duration of the accreditation cycle, not only at the point of assessment but as part of an ongoing relationship.

PROCESSES

We operate with standard accreditaiton processes of application for candidacy (eligibility) followed by a self evaluation, site review visit and a decision. Follow the links below for further details:

What is a School of Public Health?

Despite their fundamental role in strengthening population health, Schools of Public Health remain largely undefined. There is, however, broad consensus that their remit spans education, research and service, which are widely regarded as core pillars of their function (1, 2). These functions may also be delivered within faculties, departments, colleges, institutes: terms subject to variable vocabulary and application across regions and institutions (3).

In the United States of America, for example, the accreditation of a school of public health requires the delivery of a minimum number of Master’s-level courses in specified core public health disciplines and a seperation from medical academic units . This is a prerequisite both for accreditation whcih leads to membership in the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH). In contrast, the European landscape has no such standardised threshold. Some institutions are recognised as schools of public health while offering only a single programme (4) and within the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER), although being an “association of schools” there are members that do not offer any dedicated public health degrees at all! (5).

Early efforts to define such institutions are found in WHO’s 1961 report, which described a school of public health as an institution that, “in addition to research in public health and service to the community, provides a full-time course lasting not less than one academic year” (6).

Later, in 1985, the World Health Organization adopted a broader and more inclusive interpretation, stating that schools of public health include “institutions that provide full-time postgraduate courses lasting at least one academic year. Other institutions, such as schools of medicine, that have a department of public health, community health, or the like, offering postgraduate programmes in public health, are also included” (7).

The challenge of definition remains. As noted in the Lancet Commission report by Frenk et al., found challenges in contextualising a clear definition of what constitutes a “school of public health”. The authors acknowledged that “because of definitional ambiguity, [our] estimation of public health institutions was incomplete.” (8)

For the purposes of ICAPHE accreditation, we have adopted the 1985 WHO definition, which remains one of the few formal attempts to articulate the expected functions of such schools and notably uses the plural “courses” and “programmes” to define and delineate the educational remit of a “school.”

On this basis, ICAPHE recognises a School of Public Health as an entity that integrates two or more academic public health courses or programmes lasting more than one year.

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Köhler L. The mission of public health during the next 25 years, A European perspective. in Public health and socio-economic changes at the dawn of the 21st century, implication on public health academic education. University of Indonesia, Jakarta, 1992.
Tulchinsky TH. Developing schools of public health in countries of Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Public health reviews. 2001;30(1-4):179-200.
Goodman. J, Müller-Nordhorn. J, Cavallo. F, Kalediene. R, Kuiper. T. Toward Equity in the Quality of European Public Health Education. Results, discussion and recommendations from the “Public health Education Reform For Equity in Quality of Training” (PERFEQT) project. Brussels, Belgium: The Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region; 2013.
Roshi E, Bino S, Burazeri G, Ylli A, Laaser U, Tulchinsky T, et al. Development of a master of public health programme in Tirana, Albania. Journal of Public Health. 2006;14(4):229-32.
ASPHER. Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region https://www.aspher.org/users.html2025 [last accesed March 2025]
World Health Organization. Recommended requirements for schools of public health: tenth report of the Expert Committee on Professional and Technical Education of Medical and Auxiliary Personnel [meeting held in Geneva from 12 to 16 December 1960]. 1961.
World Health Organization. World directory of schools of public health and postgraduate training programmes in public health. 1985.
Frenk J, Chen L, Bhutta ZA, Cohen J, Crisp N, Evans T, et al. Health professionals for a new century: transforming education to strengthen health systems in an interdependent world. The Lancet. 2010;376(9756):1923-58.