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.
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 on a morning and start at 9am and finish at 1pm (UK time). The rest of learning will be asynchronous.
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:
- Sunday 7th January 2024 - 09:00 - 13:00 (GMT)
- Wednesday 17th January 2024 - 09:00 - 13:00 (GMT)
- Wednesday 24th January 2024 - 09:00 - 13:00 (GMT)
- Wednesday 7th February 2024 - 09:00 - 13:00 (GMT)
- Wednesday 14th February 2024 - 09:00 - 13:00 (GMT)
- Wednesday 28th February 2024 - 09:00 - 13:00 (GMT)
100% of students on the 2022 course would recommend the course to friends and colleagues.
“Really enjoyed this course, has been a perfect taster to global health and develop my interest in this further, course leads have all been excellent and each has brought different experience and knowledge to the course, really inspired me to take things further and develop my interest in global health/infectious diseases”
“Awesome course, really loved the small group cohort & having peers and lecturers from different backgrounds”
“I really enjoyed this course, I had reached a slight ebb in my enthusiasm for my career in medicine after COVID and found this has really inspired to me to pursue what I find interesting.”
“I’m glad I was a part of this course, no regrets just happiness. This course made me love more, research and dream more about following this career, I’m sure with the knowledge I have learned here I’ll do better and I’ll pursuit for more to complement”
“Excellent faculty, good tone of course with interesting topics/expectations and online environment to contribute, overall well planned/structured/thought-out”
“[I liked] multicultural interaction, competence of the course and thoughts openness”
“Enjoyed doing group work with people from all around the world and learning different perspectives. Really enjoyed practically planning programmes for disease elimination, particularly thinking about the specific cultural factors. I thought all 3 organisers – Becky, Phil and Dave were very approachable! I also loved all the real-world advice for a career in global health”
Applications are now closed. You can register your interest and we will let you know when applications reopen.
Entry criteria
The Global Health Primer for Doctors is open to doctors who hold a medical qualification from a recognised medical school in any country who are registered for medical practice in that country. The number of participants on our 2024 course is limited to 75.
Places are not allocated on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Applicants must have a good standard of written and spoken English and of English comprehension.
Please write a statement explaining why you would like to do the course, what you hope to gain from doing the course, and highlighting any previous experiences you think would make you a good fit. When applying for discounted fees, please include proof of status instead of your CV. This can be confirmed with a passport and proof of current residence.
Please read LSHTM's Admissions policies prior to submitting your application.