[Education by correspondence: a strategy for training and instruction in health services administration]

The training of health services administration professionals in Mexico has faced two main challenges. One the one hand, the need to have recognition as professionals, and on the other hand the difficulty to train individuals that are currently working as health care administrators. This article emphasizes a distance education strategy as an alternative to provide training to these type of personnel. A proposal developed as the second phase of the Advance Education Program on Health Administration (PROASA-II) is presented. It has the objective to strengthen local institutions to take responsibility for the future training of their professional administration staff. Once that this is started, we can begin to talk about the creation of a national system of manpower training in health administration and public health, that will support the decentralization and the appropriate training of the different levels of health administration in the country.