The Global Health Primer for Doctors is an eight-week online course aimed at early-career doctors who are interested in a career in global health. It will provide a foundational knowledge base, teach relevant critical skills, and generate a network of clinicians to prepare you for future work within the field.

Course objectives

• To define global health and issues pertaining to global health such as health inequity within the current world landscape
• To develop critical analysis and appraisal skills and apply this to scientific papers relevant to global health, and to break this down to a digestible level for local communities
• To analyse clinical scenarios and create appropriate investigative and management plans for parasitological infections
• To discuss public health strategies for the control of parasitic infections
• To analyse disease elimination and eradication strategies and identify appropriate diseases to be targeted for this
• To develop a network of like-minded people, interested in global health, who can learn from each other and work together to solve problems
• To develop teamworking skills within the online environment

Who should apply? 

Any early-career doctor who would like to work within the field of global health, or who has an interest in global health and would like to learn more.

As the course delivery is fully online, we expect our audience to be one which continues to work full-time throughout the course, remaining in their home country (or the country in which they work), allowing them to continue to earn a living whilst also studying part-time on an affordable, high-quality course.

Teaching and assessment

This is a fully online course, with a mix of asynchronous activities, as well as live sessions which we strongly encourage you to attend. 

Much of the teaching has been designed to be interactive, to enable you to (virtually) meet other students on the course and to develop networks whilst gaining fundamental learning for a foundation in global health. 

There will be a series of formative assessments throughout the course, mainly based around the live and interactive days, to which you will need to have contributed in order to gain your Certificate of Completion at the end of the course.

Course content will be centred around four modules; Module 1: Critical skills; Module 2: Parasitology; Module 3: Disease Elimination and Eradication; and Module 4: PRIMER! (covering hot topics in global health) 

A Certificate of Attendance will be provided.

Time commitment

Each module has approximately 20 hours of learning attached. Every 1-2 weeks there will be a live, synchronous session delivered via Zoom, each of which lasts for 4 hours. All live sessions are in the morning and starting at 9 am and finishing at 1 pm (UK time). The rest of the learning will be asynchronous. Between live sessions will be a series of team tasks to work on, for which you will need to meet up with your team at a time that suits you.

You are expected to attend a minimum of 4 of the live sessions to gain the certificate of completion at the end of the course. We hope that by sharing these live dates with you now, you will be able to arrange study leave to attend them. We would strongly suggest ensuring you can attend the first session when you will meet key people including your tutor and team who you will work with for the duration of the course. The live dates and times are listed below:

• Wednesday 12^th March 2025 - 09:00 - 13:00 (UK time)
• Wednesday 26^th March 2025 - 09:00 - 13:00 (UK time)
• Wednesday 2^nd April 2025 - 09:00 - 13:00 (UK time)
• Wednesday 16^th April 2025 - 09:00 - 13:00 (UK time)
• Wednesday 23^rd April 2025 - 09:00 - 13:00 (UK time)
• Wednesday 7^th May 2025 - 09:00 - 13:00 (UK time)