Community and Public Health Global Course Descriptor

Course Overview

This course provides a rigorous introduction to some of the key concepts and principles of public health. Public health is essential to all aspects of health and wellbeing and is crucial to reducing health inequalities and influencing the wider determinants of health. It is an important part of the remit of all those engaged in healthcare, including practitioners, academics, policymakers, governments, and the public.

The course will explore some of the progress made in public health over the last 100 years, and also consider the challenges that still needs to be addressed in both the Global North and Global South.

It also explores contemporary public health issues such as the global burden of disease, social determinants of inequalities in health and health care, communicable disease detection and management, environmental health risks, and unhealthy behaviours including substance use such as drugs, smoking, gambling and alcohol.

Finally it analyses comparative case studies that showcase how public health practices and principles apply to urban health concerns.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject Specific Skills

Transferable and Professional/Employability Skills

Teaching and Learning 

Teaching and learning strategies for this course will include: 

A minimum of 36 contact hours, typically to include interactive group teaching, co-curriculars, individual meetings, and in-class presentations and exams.

Course information and supplementary materials are available on the University’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

Students will receive individualised developmental feedback on their work for this course.

Students are required to attend and participate in all the formal and timetabled sessions for this course. Students are also expected to manage their directed learning and independent study in support of the course.

Assessment

Formative

Students will be formatively assessed in class through class activities, and during office hours. Formative assessments are ones that do not count towards the final grade but will provide students with developmental feedback.

Summative

Further information on the structure of summative assessment elements can be found in the Summative Assessment Briefs.

Feedback

Students will receive feedback in a variety of ways: written (including via email correspondence); oral (within office hours or on an ad hoc basis) and indirectly through class discussion.

Feedback on examinations is provided through generic internal examiners’ reports and are made available to the student on the VLE. For all other summative assessment methods, feedback is made available to the student either via email, the VLE or another appropriate method. 

Indicative Reading

Books

• Schneider, Mary-Jane. 2021. Introduction to Public Health, 6th Edition. New York: Jones and Bartlett
• Ashton, John and Levin, Lowell S. 2021. Public Health Explored. 1st edition. St Albans: Critical Publishing

Indicative Topics

Students will typically study the following topics:

• Global burden of disease
• Social determinants of health care inequalities
• Environmental health

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