Introduction:

The University of San Carlos de Guatemala started in 2011 the Doctoral Program in Public Health to train professionals of high research level. With the first graduates in 2015, it was conducted a self-assessment that concluded with an improvements plan in search of the external accreditation.

Objective:

To describe the process of self-assessment of the Doctorate in Public Health, University of San Carlos de Guatemala, 2015.

Methods:

A descriptive study was conducted in which there were considered the indicators of the Central American Agency for Accreditation of Graduate Programs and it was applied its self-assessment guide for graduate programs in the phases of: awareness, preparation, implementation and evaluative synthesis. The weighted indicators, that describe three levels of maturity, grouped eight categories with the percentage of the program´s compliance in an overall way.

Results:

There were identified 165 indicators for a 65 % of overall compliance. Five categories were found below this value: graduates, students, research and innovation, links, projection, and social impact and collaboration and academic exchanges; which indicate a level of initial maturity. The categories of teachers, learning process and administrative and academic management showed values higher than 75%, which place them in the maturity managed level.

Conclusions:

The self-assessment contributed to the different actors involved to acquire experience in the improvement of the program before starting a new cohort.

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