Panama, 22 October 2026 (PAHO) – The Pan American Health Organization's (PAHO) Virtual Campus for Public Health (VCPH) participated virtually in the congress on "Informatics, Innovation and Research" organized by Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, held from 19 to 23 October, to present its learning pathways initiative. The initiative aims to promote flexible, competency-based learning pathways tailored to the needs of health systems.
Isabel Duré, international consultant for PAHO's Virtual Campus for Public Health, participated in the panel "Lifelong Learning and Digital Transformation: New Pathways for Health Workforce Education", as part of the congress's Digital Health Education program. During her presentation, she discussed the role of continuing education in health, the importance of workplace settings as learning environments, and the opportunities offered by digital technologies to strengthen the continuing professional development of the health workforce across the Region of the Americas.
Isabel Duré presented the VCPH learning pathways, designed as structured learning journeys that bring together different educational activities, including courses, workshops, seminars, webinars, and communities of practice, based on the competencies required for specific professional profiles.
"The challenge is not only to expand access to training, but also to provide learning opportunities that respond to the real needs of health workers and health services. Through the Virtual Campus, we aim to ensure that continuing education contributes to competency development and the transformation of health practices," said Isabel Duré.
The initiative seeks to address the fragmentation of educational offerings and enable health workers to build learning pathways that contribute, in a coordinated and complementary manner, to their professional development and the strengthening of health systems.
During her presentation, Duré also highlighted the importance of advancing mechanisms for recognizing learning achievements, such as microcredentials, to support these pathways in alignment with each country's regulatory and certification frameworks.
From individual courses to learning pathways
The Virtual Campus for Public Health is a strategic technical cooperation platform of PAHO aimed at strengthening health workforce capacities. It currently has more than 5.1 million registered users and offers over 150 free, continuously available courses in the Organization's four official languages.
As part of the evolution of its educational approach, the VCPH is promoting the development of competency-based learning pathways in priority areas for health systems. Examples presented included pathways focused on primary health care, digital health, the regulation of medicines and health technologies, and improving care for noncommunicable diseases.
This approach recognizes that health workforce education goes beyond acquiring knowledge through individual courses. It requires lifelong learning opportunities that respond to the evolving demands of professional practice.
PAHO's participation in the congress provided an opportunity to share the Virtual Campus's progress in developing educational approaches that connect learning opportunities with the competencies needed to transform health systems across the Region.
Learn more: https://campus.paho.org/en/if
