Introduction:

Medical education in Colombia has been a widely debated topic and has required multiple changes. Currently, several organizations worldwide are responsible for formulating recommendations to improve medical education and comprehensive care for people, being public health the cornerstone of the process.

Objective:

To identify the importance of public health in the educational process of Colombian health professionals.

Development:

The potential of medical education to create recommendations that promote comprehensive care, human quality and strategies for improving the health of the population within the process must be recognized based on the importance of including public health during undergraduate formation, which prospectively allows health professional an adequate and appropriate training for their working life, as well as the knowledge of the needs of the population and the possibility of anticipating them through the use of primary health care.

Conclusions:

In order to favor the different levels of prevention, from the promotion of health and public policies, the inequality gaps in health are reduced based on the social determinants of health. Likewise, there must be a balance between the traditional biomedical model and the social approach of the health professions, since the life of the average medical student is mostly within a hospital setting, which fosters the idea of hospitalocentrist model and set aside the comprehensive perspective.

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