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You’ll work on two projects – the Global Health Challenge and the Health Consultant Project. Find out how these immersive experiences will shape the kind of leader you're soon to become.
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The Global Health Challenge and Health Consultant projects
Re-imaging health and healthcare management requires practice. At GBSH, we have purposely designed your MBA experience to ensure that you not only get the contextual practice from thinking through and coming up with solutions to various case studies, but the opportunity to define a health problem as well as find a solution that will make a difference to others. Becoming a confident and competent health leader requires parking your ego to ensure there is room for many voices in your collaborations, challenging of processes and methods for solving problems and gaining experiences that allows you to gain experiences that has real benefit.
We have designed two experiences for you that will push your comfort levels and give you the global exposure you need to make a difference for healthcare.
Global Health Challenge
Through the Global Health Challenge, you will learn the importance of team dynamics and collaboration for identifying health issues and finding solutions. It brings your learning across your MBA programme together through an overseas project in a low or middle-income country. It will require you to use key tools of business and management that you have acquired across the programme in fields such as strategy, project management, finance, marketing and leadership together. This group project involves conceptualising issues, undertaking fieldwork, researching solutions, and working as a diverse team to find solutions to the question you are exploring. You will learn how to present and communicate your findings as part of the learning on this capstone experiential learning component of your programme.
This experience will begin as soon as you arrive at GBSH. As part of your induction you will take a number of assessments that will support to place you in the most appropriate project team. It will build on the characteristics of your talented colleagues while giving you an appreciation of how you can develop as a group to maximise your performance.
This project is designed to give you experiential learning by allowing you to work on a current health problem in a low- or middle-income country to find a solution. This contextualized approach with a two-week field work experience in January will allow you and your teammates to experience what it is like to undertake research in a low- or middle-income country as you develop your project management skills.
These projects are developed across the academic year giving you experience in putting into action a project idea that will create healthier lives somewhere in the world. Examples of possible projects we will be looking to develop with you include: analysis of bottlenecks in healthcare supply chains, financial analysis of government health NGO budgets, organizational change for a healthcare service, health policy implementation and embedding health innovations. You will develop your project through a series of seminars and workshops each carefully planned so you can understand the different phases of the project such as how to identify the problem, structure the project and research meaningful solution/hypothesis that can be tested for validity. You will also gain leadership, management and collaboration skills that you will utilize across your future career.
You and your team will be supported by our world-class academics at UCL who are cutting-edge in their applied health research across the world. You and your team will be expected to meet with your academic supervisory support team at least twice a term to ensure that you are developing the project in line with expectations as well as being supported in addressing any barriers you might face. You will have a project supervisor who will travel with you to undertake your field experience in early January and also have responsibility for the itinerary and logistics of the trip which will ensure a rich cross-cultural experience alongside your field work.
This project aims to provide you with:
- In-depth knowledge of a specific area of health and healthcare in the context of low- and middle-income countries
- Appropriate use of business and leadership skills acquired across your MBA programme to solve real world health challenges
The Global Health Challenge is an opportunity to pursue an in-depth project that makes a difference not only for you, but for others.
Health Consultant projects
In your final term of the programme, you will have the opportunity to connect with the health sector in an area that will help shape your career. You will bring together what you have learnt across the programme and through into a consultancy project working for a health sector client. This piece of work is an opportunity for you to work independently or in a small group depending on the project to shape and engage on a problem or opportunity that needs addressing by the health client. This project may include an enhanced synthesis of the literature, practice or applied research. The ambition is to identify and shape the project with your client and develop your academic and professional skills for personal and professional development while delivering tangible outcomes for the client. You will begin to work on the project at the end of term two through a focused workshop and individual work with a career coach to ensure you get the right fit in terms of project and client for your future aspirations.
The consultancy project will be delivered primarily through supported independent project work. This consultancy project is primarily student-centered learning. You will have developed your consultancy skills via a series of lectures and workshops ran in term two. Key skills, methodologies, critical paradigms and approaches to consultancy in practice will have been covered in your other modules and through workshops. These topics will come alive for you as you work on this client driven project. There will also be training in database searching to assist you with any desk-based work to your project.
There will be tutorial support from a nominated supervisor available in term three. Students will be expected to meet with their academic supervisor as well as client contact at least three times to ensure that they develop the project in line with expectations of the client.
The project aims to provide you with:
- In-depth knowledge of how to undertake effective consultancy projects in the health sector
- Appropriate research and reviewing skills required for a successful project experience
- Knowledge and skills on how to manage client expectations and engagement
The ability to ask appropriate questions, listen and structure a brief with your client will assist you with crucial aspects of consultancy that will build your confidence and capabilities for future projects.