BSc Global public health and primary care
Aims and objectives
High quality primary health care and public health systems are the cornerstone of an efficient, effective, and equitable health system. The primary health care model provides the internationally established norm for attaining the World Health Organization’s commitment to ‘health for all’. This vision for developing public health and primary care is widely held but depends critically on capacity building to produce research leaders, educators, and policy-makers. What is needed is not just doctors who are good clinicians and scientists but doctors who can act effectively as change agents in a global context.
Outline description of the programme
This new intercalated BSc programme is underpinned by a commitment to principles of social justice and fairness. It will provide students with an understanding of the significance of the current global challenges for health care and public health and will offer a multidisciplinary focus on global public health and primary care against a background of increasing health inequalities.
This programme will prepare students for the challenges facing public health and primary care across a range of contexts and in different countries. Their understanding of planning and developing services and their ability to advocate for them will be greatly enhanced by new multidisciplinary skills. Strong emphasis is placed on research methods and analytic techniques, and research methods are integrated into many modules. Students will also have a unique opportunity to work on and learn about current research, the approaches and findings of which will inform the teaching programme.
Structure and timing
Summary for 2012/13 with unit values
| 1 | Epidemiology and statistics | 1 unit | Autumn term |
| 2 | Health, illness and society | 1 unit | Autumn term |
| 3 | Health inequalities and social determinants of health | 1 unit | Autumn term |
| 4 | Health systems, economics, and policy | 1 unit | Autumn term |
| 5 | Primary health care: theory and practice | 1 unit | Spring term |
| 6 | Globalisation and health care reform | 1 unit | Spring term |
| 7 | Migration and health | 1 unit | Spring term |
| 8 | Contemporary medical ethics | 1 unit | Spring term |
| 9 | Research appraisal & synthesis | 1 unit | Spring term |
| 10 | Project | 2 units | Spring term |
Summary of programme units
Required units
Epidemiology and statistics
Module organiser: Prof Sandra Eldridge, Centre for Primary Care & Public Health
The module provides an introduction to key concepts, methods and topics in epidemiology and the statistical methods typically used in public health and policy making. It will introduce students to the techniques used to appraise critically published research in public health and epidemiological literature. It will provide an introduction to approaches to measuring and understanding the health of populations, and to the importance of routine data, accuracy, and completeness. It explains some of the basic principles underlying epidemiological and statistical methods used in policy making and clinical research.
Health, illness, and society
Module organiser: Prof Clive Seale, Centre for Primary Care & Public Health
This module involves sociological and anthropological analyses of health and illness experiences, of experiences of health care, and an introduction to research methods relevant for carrying out such work. Topics within may include the sociology of the body, chronic illness and disability, provider-patient relations, medicalisation and the medical model, health social movements, mass media and health, and the sociology of bioethics.
The module will provide students with the methodological and analytical skills needed to formulate a sociological and anthropological understanding of health, illness and health care in contemporary societies. Students will grasp how social theories can be brought to bear on this field to develop this understanding, and will evaluate the potential of sociological and anthropological work in helping to solve health and illness problems.
Health inequalities and social determinants of health
Module organiser: Prof Allyson Pollock, Centre for Primary Care & Public Health
Marked inequalities in health persist both within and between countries. These inequalities can be seen along various axes including gender, race, and access to material resources. The module aims to demonstrate the extent of inequalities in health and it will explore current theories explaining how inequalities arise, focusing on behavioural/cultural, psychosocial, and structural/material explanations.
The module will also investigate the role of varying approaches to economic and social policy in creating or reducing inequalities. It will specifically consider how approaches to taxation, provision of the welfare state, and the funding and delivery of public services (in particular health services) can impact on the equitable distribution of resources within society.
Health systems, economics and policy
Module organiser: David Price, Centre for Primary Care & Public Health
All governments accept some responsibility for the allocation of health care throughout society and none leaves allocation entirely to the market. By contrasting integrated public with market-based health systems, the module provides an essential grounding in the analysis of major trends in health care policy both within the United Kingdom and internationally.
We address the fundamental public health question of how best to organise health care in order to achieve universal coverage. We will be particularly concerned with the ways in which health care systems differ from the perspective of access to services among social groups within the population, and also with the distributive effects of different organising principles such as market and public control. Consideration will also be given to the arguments for market reforms as governments adopt policies of cost containment in health spending.
Primary health care: theory and practice
Module organiser: Prof Trish Greenhalgh, Centre for Primary Care & Public Health
This module aims to introduce students to the academic study of primary health care. The focus will be on primary care as a practice that is informed by a number of primary disciplines including but not limited to biomedicine, epidemiology, sociology, anthropology and psychology.
Students will cover the many and varied models of primary health care across the world, and the commonalities of good primary care practice across different structures and systems; the messiness and complexity of primary care and the challenges arising from this; lifelong learning and reflective practice for the primary care practitioner; the therapeutic relationship and continuity of care; and links between primary care (individual and family focus) and public health (community and population focus)
Globalisation and health care reform
Module organiser: David Price, Centre for Primary Care & Public Health
This module will introduce students to the core concepts and theories of economic analysis that have underpinned the global trend towards health care reform. Conventional economic analyses of health policy will be examined and contrasted with public health approaches to health care planning. Particular attention is given to the impact of commercialisation on health care systems as a result of the international policy of increased private provision of public services. Closer involvement of the private sector in the planning and provision of public services has a range of practical and normative implications of which policy analysts need to be aware.
Migration and health
Module organiser: Prof Parvati Nair, Centre for Migration Studies
This module will introduce students to a range of health-related issues that arise in the context of migration. It will consider key facets of migration in order to understand and assess the consequences for health and the risks to health posed by migration. Equally, the module will explore the ways in which migration is embarked upon with a view to attaining what many believe will be ‘a better life’, which implies a healthy life.
The focus will be on health concerns that arise in contexts of human mobility and relocation in light of the rights to health that all humans are supposed to have. In order to do so, the module will consist of three related parts. The first will introduce students to categories and typologies of migration, as well as to related concepts, such as borders, alterity, risk, mobility, diaspora, transnationalism and transculturation. These will serve as conceptual and typological routes through which to understand questions of health in the context of migration. The second part of the module will examine health risks posed by migration, both to migrants and to host communities. The third part of this module will focus on health-related issues that arise among immigrant communities, with particular emphasis on chronic illness and cultural beliefs.
By the end of this module, students will have been introduced to the principle ways in which health concerns are shaped and affected by migration. Students will have gained an understanding of key concepts in the study of migration and will be able to apply these concepts to analysing problems of health and social wellbeing in the context of mobility and relocation.
Contemporary medical ethics
Module organiser: Dr Miran Epstein, Centre for Primary Care & Public Health
The past four decades or so have seen the decline of all local traditional systems of medical ethics and their ongoing supersession by a single global new one, also known as ‘biomedical ethics’. The global nature of this transformation means that it is now possible to talk about one single medical ethics without having to make some overly sweeping abstractions. This ethics comprises the rules that are supposed to regulate the relations both among health care providers—staff, institutions, scientists and their sponsors—as well as between them and other stakeholders, notably the patient, the human guinea pig, and the public.
This module will attempt to define the ethical transformation in terms of both form and content, identify its beneficiaries and victims, and provide alternative historical explanations for its emergence and evolution. It will do so through a journey into five major areas: the discourse on resource allocation, consent and consensus, human research ethics, the ‘end-of-life’ debate, and the organ crisis.
Research appraisal and synthesis
Module organiser: Dr Catherine Meads, Centre for Primary Care & Public Health
Considerable health research is published annually, not all of good quality. Practice must continually evolve, however, based on the best research available. It is essential therefore, that healthcare practitioners can appraise new research evidence and make sensible decisions as to whether new research should alter clinical practice or not. This module provides the skills for healthcare practitioners to be able to appraise research evidence and synthesise where multiple sources of evidence are available in order to be able to improve their own practice. They will also be able to appreciate how research evidence can alter health policy.
Students will know where to find the different types of research studies they will need to answer a variety of healthcare questions such as condition causation, frequency and prognosis, diagnostic accuracy, treatment effectiveness and harm and the patient experience. They will also have the knowledge to place current policy-making using research evidence in the UK and international context. They will know how to commission a research synthesis project. This module will give them the essential skills if they decide to do a systematic review for their dissertation.
Project
The project will normally be a piece of original research, which runs throughout the spring term and is presented as a written report. If the work is suitable, it may be published in a scientific journal (possibly combined with the results of other BSc projects) and/or be presented, orally or in the form of a poster, at a scientific meeting.
You will be able to choose the subject of your project from a diverse range of topics and supervisors. However, if you have a specific interest outside of the project areas on offer, it is possible, subject to consultation with a potential supervisor, to devise a project related to this.