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This module will introduce you to the key concepts, principles, and methods of interdisciplinary public health practice to improve health and reduce health inequalities.
Public health is the art and science of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through the organised efforts of society. It is inherently interdisciplinary in its approach to understanding and addressing the challenges facing population health globally.
Public health practice involves many professional groups, such as clinicians, epidemiologists, statisticians, psychologists, behavioural scientists, health economists, infectious disease scientists, social scientists, emergency planners, humanitarian responders, leadership and business consultants, research methodologists, climate scientists, historians, urban planners, engineers, architects, and many others.
In this module, you will be introduced to the core themes which underpin and distinguish this contemporary MPH programme: interdisciplinarity; health inequalities; voices of the public; practitioners’ perspectives; core skills; and implementation, action, and impact. You will be introduced to the key concepts, principles, and methods of interdisciplinary public health practice to improve health and reduce health inequalities. It will draw on the perspectives of different academic disciplines, the professional experience of public health practitioners, and uniquely, the lived experience of citizens.
You will explore the meaning of health and the causes and consequences of health and disease. You will be introduced to the different professional groups involved in public health. You will gain an interdisciplinary perspective of the distribution of health and health inequalities across different levels of human society from individual characteristics, early life experiences, social behaviour, employment, and welfare through to the built environment, geography, politics, conflict, migration, macro-economics and climate change. You will examine whether these factors may be causal, how they overlap and concentrate among certain people, and by what mechanistic pathways they may operate.
You will get a grounding in the production and application of research evidence in public health practice. You will learn about public health data and information sources and the strengths and limitations of these. You will learn about the key principles of public health evaluation and different types of evaluation.
You will learn how to identify and engage with multi-disciplinary stakeholders to achieve change. You will learn the principles for engaging, involving, and co-producing with communities, patients, and the public. You will critically assess how poor health and health inequalities can be addressed through public health interventions, policy, and advocacy, including how these can be used to drive system level change. You will draw on work-based case studies from high-, middle-, and low-income countries to illustrate key concepts, principles, and methods.
Aims of the module
The aims of this module are to introduce students to the key concepts, principles, and methods of interdisciplinary public health practice to improve health and reduce health inequalities. It will draw on the perspectives of different academic disciplines, the professional experience of public health practitioners, and uniquely, the lived experience of citizens. It will include topics on:
- Health, disease, and need
- Wider determinants of health
- Health inequalities and approaches to tackle them
- Public health strategy development
- Public health evaluation and monitoring, including practical methods and tools
- Stakeholder and community engagement and coproduction
- Attitudes and values of a public health practitioner