[Curriculum design of the Master's in Public Health program via the inservice education system. The Working Group of the Innovation Program in Health Systems and Professional Training].

This article presents the curriculum design process experience of the School of Public Health of Mexico's In-Service Master of Public Health Program, offered through the distance education model. The Program was created as a response to the Mexican health system's human resources training needs, with the purpose of contributing to the health services decentralization process, the strengthening of managerial skills of local health district managers, and to the professionalization of public health. The Program's design and development are based on a distance education system as an alternative to the traditional training models. The distance education model offers the possibility to train human resources on their job, to link permanently theory and practice, and to improve, in the short-term, the professional performance of students. The curriculum design process included the analysis of the student's training needs based on their professional profile, the type of plan of study that could take into account those training needs, and of the advisers and tutor's required profile, educational background, and job experience. The different disciplines were grouped around the knowledge objects, and not around independent courses. The health planning process was taken as a central axis and conductive line for integrating the thematic contents. The Master's plan of study was conformed by four stages: health diagnosis, formulation of the organized social response, implementation, and evaluation.