The Postgraduate Program in Public Health (PPGSP) of the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) consists of the Doctorate in Public Health, created in December 2014, and the Master of Public Health, created in 1994, thus making up 24 years of experience in the Brazilian Collective Health training network. It is noteworthy that, although it was created in 2014, this Doctorate represents, in reality, the deployment of the Doctorate Program in Collective Health in Broad Association of Higher Education Institutions (HEI), an innovative experience in our reality. This doctorate began in 2008 initially with the participation of UFC and the State University of Ceará (UECE), with later entrance (2011) from the University of Fortaleza (UNIFOR), making a path that already reaches a decade of teaching experience. PPGSP at the PhD level. The UFC faculty in this initiative in association of IES played a key role in achieving the success of this initiative, generating recognition and awards, such as the CAPES Thesis Award of the Collective Health Area in 2016.
It is noteworthy that the constitution of the Doctorate in Public Health responds to a clear need to offer doctoral programs in various local and regional university institutions, such as the UFC itself. As well as the UFC, UECE and UNIFOR have their own doctoral programs, which allowed for greater diversification of study programs according to the vocations of each of these institutions in order to account for the intrinsically interdisciplinary characteristics of the field of Collective Health. In addition, it allows greater responsiveness to the challenges of expanding doctoral training in less favored Brazilian settings, especially in the North and Northeast regions of the country. Thus, by deploying the efforts invested in the Master and the pioneering Program in Broad Association, the UFC Doctorate in Public Health enabled the qualitative expansion of research and teaching activities in the postgraduate level, contributing to the achievement of the proposed UFC’s institutional development.