The Harvard School of Public Health will receive approximately $5 million over five years through a contract with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to finance a program in continuing education for health care professionals.

The program has been in effect since September of 1974 and is conducted by the School of Public Health and the Radcliffe Institute.

Gordon Chase, lecturer at the School of Public Health and the Kennedy School of Government, is director of the program.

Chase, a former head of New York City Health Services, said yesterday that the purpose of the program is to train health officials and health service managers--ranging from federal policy makers and financial regulators to medical review groups--and to identify the problems in the health care industry.

"The health service industry is the largest in the U.S. other than defense," Chase said.

"The health care program is definitely in trouble in the U.S.," he added.

The program is being conducted in conjunction with the Radcliffe Institute's public health care research programs. The Johnson Foundation gave two grants to the Radcliffe Institute in June of 1974 to initiate a health care research program. HEW later gave the Institute two grants totaling $360,000 to study the status of women in the health care labor force.

Chase said that because of the Institute's existing facilities and programs HEW wants the institute to act as a clearinghouse for health care programs. One of the programs will survey people in the health care field around the country to determine what they feel are the problems facing the industry.

Dr. Peter B. Doeringer '62, former associate professor of Political Economy in the Kennedy School of Government and presently professor of Economics at Boston University, is faculty coordinator for the program.

Entire University

Chase said instructors for the program would come from within Harvard and without, and that the program would draw from the entire University, not just the School of Public Health.

The grants are to serve as initial funding for the program, but later the program will be financed by service fees. "If we are delivering a good product, institutions should be willing to pay for our services," he added.

The basic concern of the program is in dealing with people already in the health care field, but the program would not preclude medical students, he said. It is very possible that programs or curricula could include students at the medical school, Chase added