Aims

Public Health is the art and science of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts of society. The Public Health theme aims to provide students with the theoretical knowledge and applied skills to launch a career in public health service, research, policy or advocacy. 

Learning Outcomes 

By the end of the course, students should be able to: 

1. Critically appraise and apply knowledge from studies using qualitative methods to inform public health theory, research, policy, and practice. 
2. Explore theories describing health, illness, health care and health policy as social processes and critically apply these to diverse case scenarios.
3. Identify social determinants of health and disease at individual, interpersonal, institutional, community, and policy level, and use these to analyse causes of public health problems and inform development of appropriate interventions.
4. Select appropriate methods for health improvement and disease control and prevention at individual, interpersonal, institutional, community, and policy levels.
5. Design robust evaluations of interventions with the potential to improve health or prevent disease.

Theme module options 

Choose at least four from the following modules: 

• Qualitative and mixed methods 
• Social and spatial epidemiology 
• Changing behaviour 
• Health economics 
• Policy and public health 
• Theories of leadership and change for public health practice
• Quantitative Health Impact Assessment

Plus two more modules, chosen from any theme (including other PH modules), from the full list of student-selected modules. 

Note: Students on the Health Education England Public Health Training Programme must select the first six of these modules, unless they have permission from their training programme supervisor to make different choices.