Leaders around the world – leaders of families, schools, workplaces, hospitals, governments, and multinational organisations - have to make incredibly tough decisions that affect the lives of billions of people. Should we close schools during a pandemic? Should we fund an expensive new drug that will save lives? This module will equip you to support people in making optimal choices in a world with scarce resources, limited information, and lives and economies at stake. We will take a look at a diverse range of subjects that contribute to this field: from statistics to sociology, and from economics to ethics. Many examples will be drawn from the world of infectious diseases, but the approaches are applicable across public health. 

Note: Decision science is an interdisciplinary and integrative approach. It has both quantitative and qualitative components. This course aims to train students to understand, interpret and integrate evidence across different fields to support decision-making. It does not provide expert-level training in any of the individual fields (e.g. mathematical modelling, health economics, qualitative methods).

Intended learning outcomes

Upon successful completion of the module, a student will be able to:

• Understand key elements of the health decision-making process.
• Describe the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to health decision-making.
• Choose health decision-making approaches that are appropriate to specific health situations.
• Apply health decision-making approaches to real-world or hypothetical health situations.

Session Content

The lectures will cover the following topics: 

• Introduction to health decision science.
• Engaging stakeholders.
• Disease modelling.
• Health service planning.
• Health economics.
• Uncertainty.
• Multi-criteria decision analysis.
• Communication.

Mode of delivery

This module is delivered predominantly face-to-face. Where specific teaching methods (lectures, seminars, discussion groups) are noted in this module specification these will be delivered by predominantly face-to-face sessions. There will be a combination of live and interactive activities (synchronous learning) as well as self-directed study (asynchronous learning).

Assessment

The assessment for this module has been designed to measure student learning against the module's intended learning outcomes (ILOs) as listed above. Formative assessment methods may be used to measure students’ progress. The grade for summative assessment(s) only will go towards the overall award GPA. 

The assessment for this module will be online. 

Formal assessment of this module includes an assessed assignment (100%) to be submitted at the end of the module. The assignment will be a written report. Students will be given the opportunity to ask questions about the assignment, through designated timetabled sessions and the appropriate forum on Moodle.

Credits

• CATS: 15
• ECTS: 7.5

Module specification

For full information regarding this module please see the module specification.

Please note: information based on the 2024-25 module specification subject to change for 2025-26 entry.