The officials hailed from Sweden, Poland, Germany, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Russia, Latvia, and Norway. They included Claes Ortendahl, director general and senior lecturer, Karolinska Insititute, who chairs the Council of the Baltic Sea States Working Group on Public Health Education.

At HSPH, they met with James Ware, dean for Academic Affairs; Bernita Anderson, associate dean for Academic Affairs; Roberta Gianfortoni, director for professional education and summer session; E. Francis Cook, professor, Department of Epidemiology; George Seage, associate professor, Department of Epidemiology; and Iain Aitken, lecturer, Departments of Maternal and Child Health and Population and International Health.

The Harvard trip was coordinated by the Office of the University Marshal with the US Department of State.

More than 80 representatives from more than 30 developing countries came to HSPH for three weeks recently to learn how to improve and cope with changing health care systems in their nations.

The "2003 Flagship Course on Health Sector Reform and Sustainable Financing" is a joint offering of HSPH and the World Bank Institute.

HSPH faculty participating in the course were Peter Berman (who served as course co-director), Thomas Bossert, William Hsiao, Michael Reich, and Marc Roberts. Also participating were HSPH doctoral student Melitta Jakab and World Bank faculty Abdo Yazbeck, Alex Preker, Anne Johansen, and R. Paul Shaw, who served as course co-director.

The course helped participants understand health systems and their performance and provided ways to develop reforms. In addition, the course offered specific "modules" that examined the theoretical and empirical basis for reform approaches. Participants completed reform strategy proposals for 14 countries as one of the course’s exercises.