Program vision: To become a core structure to promote practicing evidence-based decision making at all levels of health and public health systems in Mongolia.

Program mission: To strengthen the public health system through training well-qualified professionals in applied epidemiology.

Program goal: To form a core team of globally competitive professionals and epidemiologists to work across the territory of Mongolia.

The program was initiated with technical and financial support from the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2009. M-FETP residents' assignments are linked with current country public health needs, and they have responded to major outbreaks since 2009 including pandemic influenza A (H1N1), outbreaks of neonatal sepsis and food-borne illness, viral hepatitis, anthrax and measles. In June 2011, M-FETP was formally accepted as a Training Programs in Epidemiology and Public Health Network (TEPHINET) member.

M-FETP has been funded by the national budget since 2012, and by 2013 it was institutionalized within the National Center for Communicable Diseases of the Ministry of Health of Mongolia. M-FETP is indexed as specialty training under the communicable disease (091216) section of the Order of the Ministry of Health No. A/184, 2016 on basic and specialty post-graduate training courses and approved medical doctors, public health specialists, biologists and veterinarians are to be eligible for the program.

Monitoring and evaluation of the program has been carried out through a self-assessment score card approach developed based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and TEPHINET tools. An external joint program assessment of M-FETP was conducted in 2012 and concluded that M-FETP has increased the technical capacity in the country in performing comprehensive analytical epidemiological studies and has made a positive impact on the public health system through epidemiological and operational studies and outbreak investigations.

Based on the self-assessment findings and recommendations of the joint assessment, M-FETP developed a mid-term strategic plan for 2016-2018 with a focus on further strengthening management, infrastructure and operations, integration with public health service, staffing and supervision, and quality of training.

The program is well-recognized nationally and internationally during scientific conferences, and committed national and international staff members have contributed to the success of the program.

The future direction of the program is to continue to improve its quality and mentoring system internally as well as to contribute beyond training activities to remain one of the main players in strengthening IHR (International Health Regulations) country capacity. It will involve regular training for multisectoral rapid response teams and organizing basic FETP on-the-job training in public health emergency response at the subnational level. This will contribute to improved rapid detection of public health threats thus to confine immediately with trained staff at all levels and the efforts of multiple sectors.