Prevention Academy: Sanofi Pasteur and SDA Bocconi partner to train the prevention professionals of the future

The new advanced course will provide 30 young hygiene and preventive medicine professionals with the strategic healthcare and management skills which are essential to face the complexity and the evolution of the sector in the coming years.

The future of our health is (also) in the hands of the new professionals of prevention. The first Prevention Academy, an innovative advanced program designed and delivered by SDA Bocconi School of Management with the unconditional support of Sanofi Pasteur, has officially started at the Università commerciale Luigi Bocconi. Its goal is to provide thirty young talents working in the field of hygiene and preventive medicine with the right tools to face the future challenges of public health. The Academy aims at creating and consolidating both the vertical and across-the-board skills needed to rethink and reposition prevention in order for it to play an innovative role in the organizational strategy of our National Health System, with a view to creating value and sustainability. The Academy’s objective is to achieve a hard-to-find balance between exponentially increased needs, limited financial resources and responsiveness. A specific focus of the course will be on governing vaccine cycles.

When considering the new scenarios we are living in and the post-pandemic perspective, the evolution of healthcare and prevention and the growing role of digitalization and big data require new skills to integrate the major innovations we are experimenting at a global level in a virtuous manner.

Just considering the innovations the PNRR introduces in the field of healthcare, we can find it often mentions managerial topics (e.g. the budgets with reference to proximity networks as well as community health structures and telehealth budgets) and points at the importance of managerial training. As to NHS innovation, research and digitalization, the PNRR sets up training processes to develop technical, professional, digital and managerial skills. These processes are worth 18 million euros and target a population of 4500 professional figures. In this context, our program will give the 30 professionals free-of-charge access to highly qualified and specialized training tapping into Sanofi Pasteur’s scientific competences and SDA Bocconi School of Management’s managerial ones, in the innovative location of the new Bocconi Campus.

The course consists of 5 learning modules that will cover extremely important topics of the day, such as the analysis and monitoring of preventive medicine data and scenarios, strategic and operational planning, buying processes, logistics, performance measurement systems, the evolving relations between the health system and industry and the modern communication and citizen engagement tools.

“To work in prevention today’s professionals need a lifelong learning approach more than ever, so that they can combine their clinical and managerial skills, having received the right training and tools to plan, direct, monitor and engage the system they work in as well as their patients,” says Francesca Lecci, Scientific Director of Prevention Academy, Associate Professor of Practice of Government, Health and Not for Profit, Director of the Executive Master in Management of Health and Social Care Organizations (EMMAS) and Program Director of the Advanced Program in Healthcare (MAS). “In the light of the new and complex scenarios involving the overall healthcare system, Prevention Academy is a privileged setting to train people and find innovative solutions in the field of prevention and thus a real opportunity to develop our country’s healthcare system and its professionals.”

The course is fully accessible from Bocconi University’s e-learning platform which is based on the most innovative interactive methods. It aims at providing the skills needed to identify the drivers of change to achieve a new role for hygiene and preventive medicine services within the NHS, governing expenditure dynamics and repositioning prevention in the context of the evolving models for integrated chronic care and patient management.

“Sanofi Pasteur’s interest in the topics of training and skill development is the common denominator of many initiatives we are carrying on. Think of our hackathon #PerchéSì and of our LIFE blog. Prevention Academy is another important step in the journey Sanofi has designed to disseminate knowledge with the general public, on one hand, and on the other to train professionals capable of identifying and managing the strategic lines along which preventive medicine of the future must move. This is happening in a historical period when the value and perception of prevention is key,” says Mario Merlo, Sanofi Pasteur Italia’s General Manager. “We think the partnership with Bocconi can be a unique opportunity to provide today’s and tomorrow’s public health managers with the best managerial skills of SDA Bocconi, together with the know-how and expertise of Sanofi Pasteur.”



SDA Bocconi School of Management.