Public Health (Health Promotion)

This stream provides students with a sound understanding of the theoretical and empirical basis of health promotion, and equips them with the conceptual and practical skills to design and evaluate health promotion policies and programmes. Health promotion draws on ideas from sociology, psychology, anthropology, education, epidemiology and other disciplines to understand how the global health of populations can be maintained and strengthened.

Graduates work in practice, management, research and teaching in health promotion, public health, health policy and related fields at all levels.

Objectives

By the end of this stream, students should be able to demonstrate ability to apply knowledge of the core disciplines of public health, consisting of: statistics; epidemiology; health economics; and social research, to real health problems. In addition, they should be able to:

• demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the principle theories, methods and interventions used in health promotion
• understand the development of the discipline of health promotion in the UK and internationally
• assess the appropriate use of population-wide versus targeted health promotion interventions
• formulate health promotion policy and practice that is relevant to varying needs in diverse contexts
• be able to appraise and communicate research evidence
• apply the knowledge and analytical skills gained to inform health promotion policy-making, programme planning, implementation and evaluation.

Programme specifications - showing which of the various elements of the Course support and achieve each of these specific Objectives.

Term 1

Students complete the four compulsory modules constituting the Public Health common core: Basic Epidemiology; Basic Statistics for Public Health & Policy; Introduction to Health Economics; and Principles of Social Research. In addition, students intending to follow this stream must take Health Promotion Theory. The remaining module can be selected from Environment, Health & Sustainable Development; Health Policy, Process & Power; Health Services; or Issues in Public Health.

Term 1 Module details (PDF 165K)

Terms 2 and 3

Students take a total of six study modules, one from each timetable slot. The list below shows recommended modules. There are other modules which may be taken only after consultation with the Course Director. Where only one study module is shown this is compulsory.

C1: Drug, Alcohol, Tobacco Use and Public Health; Health Care Evaluation; Primary Health Care Revisited: Concepts, Tools & Experiences in low and middle income countries; Research Design and Analysis; Study Design: Writing a Study Proposal.

C2: Health Promotion Approaches and Methods.

D1: Designing Disease Control Programmes in Developing Countries; Economic Evaluation; Environmental Epidemiology; Maternal & Child Nutrition; Medical Anthropology in Public Health; Social Epidemiology.

D2: Epidemiology & Control of Communicable Diseases; Ethics, Public Health & Human Rights; Globalisation & Health; Global Mental Health; Nutrition Related Chronic Disease; Organisational Management; Reviewing the Literature; Sexual Health.

Term 2 Module details (PDF 212K)

E1: Integrating Module: Health Promotion.

E2: Analytical Models for Decision Making; Control of Reproductive Tract Infections/Sexually Transmitted Infections; Current Issues in Safe Motherhood & Perinatal Health; Health Systems; History & Health; Nutrition Programme Planning; Sociological Approaches to Health; Tropical Environmental Health.

Term 3 Module details (PDF 109K)

Project Report

All students complete a relevant research project.

Please see the MSc Public Health overview page for further details.