UCL relaunches innovative MSc in Global Health & Development

Links:

ucl.ac.uk/global-health/education/msc-ghd" target="_self">MSc in Global Health & Development

The Grand Challenge of Global Health

Understanding the complex forces that shape health worldwide is the challenge of UCL's relaunched MSc in Global Health & Development.

The course, which starts in September, draws on the university's cross-disciplinary strengths in research and teaching.

It falls under the umbrellas of the UCL Institute for Global Health and the university's overarching Grand Challenges research strategy.

In rich and poor countries alike, the gross inequalities in people's health are not simply a product of their individual choices. They are determined by the society and environment in which they find themselves.

Today's global health challenges require a coordinated response from all parts of society and all academic disciplines. They demand a new approach in research and teaching, which explores health within its broader context.

The MSc examines how climate change, economic crisis and poor governance, for example, have profound effects on health, and why policymakers, health professionals and others need the intellectual tools to understand them.

Course co-director Mike Rowson (UCL Institute of Child Health) said: "Similar MScs have traditionally focused on health policy, behavioural science and health economics. Our relaunched MSc in Global Health & Development looks at the drivers of people's health, which go far beyond the health sector, and is involving UCL departments such as anthropology, geography and philosophy to do so."

Taught by a wide range of health policy specialists, economists, philosophers, political scientists, geographers, clinicians, anthropologists, epidemiologists and sociologists, the course aims to equip students with:

•    an understanding of the principles underlying research, policy and practice in the fields of global health and development
•    the ability to evaluate critically - from a cross-disciplinary perspective - research, policy and practice in global health and development
•    essential professional and academic skills and approaches (including research and management skills), to enable students to contribute to research, practice and policy developments.

For more information about the course follow the links above.

UCL context

The UCL Institute for Global Health co-ordinates the application of the university's wide-ranging expertise by developing an institution-wide agenda leading to strategies, programmes, research and teaching which focuses on the Grand Challenge of Global Health.

UCL's research strategy defines Grand Challenges as areas in which the university is facilitating cross-disciplinary interaction - within and beyond UCL - and applying its collective strengths, insights and creativity to overcome problems of global significance. The first of these is the Grand Challenge of Global Health.

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