The SSC in International Health

Public Health - Fumigation down Havana street - Cuba

The International Health SSC focuses on a range of global issues, including poverty, globalisation, international agencies working in health, culture and inequality, among others.

This 4 week course is the only one of its kind provided within the 5th year medical curriculum, therefore it could be your last chance to have something different in your training before you move on to your professional career.

Sessions mostly consist of seminars or lectures and a degree of participation and discussion is expected. Reading material is also available. Students will have time to work from home on presentations and research for discussions. This SSC is assessed: criteria for assessments will be available in the course handbook distrubuted at the start of the course.

There are some topics that could be relevant for your revision for finals:

  • HIV/AIDS
  • tuberculosis
  • chronic disease meanagement
  • malaria
  • travel medicine
  • mental health
  • culture

The most important thing is that this SSC does not prepare you for your exams, but it prepares you for your career in the future, either in the UK or abroad.

We are only able to run this teaching-based SSC if sufficient numbers of students apply. If fewer than 12 are interested in each block, we will run a research-only SSC. This requires you to produce a 6,000-word project report on an international health topic of your choice. This will be supervised by an academic in CIHD, who will assist you in forming a research question, searching for literature and developing your argument and conclusions. For further detail on both teaching and research-based SSCs, contact the Course Director, Dr Chris Willott.