INVESTMENT ROUND: IMPACT STORY

The WHO Academy: Building a lifelong learning platform

A state-of-the-art learning hub for training health professionals, promoting health literacy, and building a stronger WHO workforce

The WHO Academy emerged in 2019 as one of the main initiatives of the WHO transformation, supported by France, as the host country, and by its national and local governments.

The Academy aims to empower health and care workers, policy-makers, and the WHO workforce to acquire the skills and competencies they need to realize the highest possible level of health for all.

Training has always been an integral part of WHO’s mandate, helping countries to translate WHO’s guidelines into policy and helping bring improvements to health systems and healthcare delivery.

Training was seen both within the Organization and by Member States as a gamechanger to make WHO stronger and enhance countries’ capabilities and enhance the health conditions and well-being of the population.

The Academy works to consolidate all the learning opportunities WHO is offering, providing more synergy, rationalization and consistency. It will also become a learning institution for WHO colleagues, providing professional development opportunities for staff and increasing expertise and capacity within the workforce.

WHO’s technical products such as recommendations, guidance, reports and data are widely used by the global health community.

The primary delivery mode is online learning, and the platform will be freely available to all as a global public good. It has been built to leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide an engaging, personalized experience for all.

WHO has also been working on modalities to allow offline access to course content for those in rural or remote areas with limited connectivity. With the launch of the WHO Academy in December 2024, this important global source of knowledge and expertise will be taken to the next level as an invaluable resource for health and care workers, teachers, students, policy makers, and the public.

→ Read the full story on the WHO Academy’s facilitation of lifelong learning

A fully funded WHO will enable the Organization to strengthen country offices and better perform by building capacity in those offices by offering training, promoting health literacy, and building a stronger WHO workforce.

Strengthening WHO’s ability to promote lifelong learning in the health sector through the Academy is an example of how WHO will contribute to the Fourteenth General Programme of Work (GPW 14) strategic objective of advancing the primary health care approach and essential health system capacities for universal health coverage. The Academy helps ensure a strong WHO and assists the Organization in performing for health. It will support WHO’s effort in ensuring that the WHO workforce is motivated, diverse, empowered and fit-for-purpose.

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