Background and Aim:
WHO Country Office in Azerbaijan in collaboration with Ministry of Health, developed a general strategy to strengthen the public health policy framework, service delivery and public health capacity in Azerbaijan. Community oriented primary care (COPC) is a strategy that elements of primary health care and public health are systematically developed and brought together in a coordinated practice. The aim of this work is to present the use of COPC training as a starting point for public health capacity development in Azerbaijan.

Methods and Results:
A public health capacity group was selected from the applicants to an advert, by a panel of representatives from the MoH, TABIB, Mandatory Health Insurance Agency, and WHO-Azerbaijan Office. A 5-day face-to-face COPC training was organized in Baku on 14-18 November 2022. The training included one field visit for observing the community, 7 interactive lectures on principles of COPC, 3 group works on practicing the skills of COPC and 3 group presentations and discussions. The training was evaluated with a self-evaluation form that the participants scored their competency on community characterization, interpretation of health indicators, prioritization, detailed assessment, intervention planning and evaluation using 1 to 10 Likert score, anonymously at the beginning and end of the training. Wilcoxon test was used for statistical analysis.

Results:
In total 20 participants took part in the training. For all six items of the self-evaluation form, the scores given at the end of the training was higher than the initial scores (p˂0.01 for all six items).

Conclusion:
COPC training is a useful method in teaching basic skills needed to address the health problems of a defined community and gives participants to use their existing knowledge and experience together with the new knowledge and skills.