Our Courses

Global Health Careers

Lucia D'Ambruoso (IAHS) - This course provides students with skills for career development and an introduction to the field of global health.  Career development topics include strategic planning, skills analysis, self-awareness, goal setting and professionalism in the workplace. For global health, we hold a series of ‘film club’ seminars using online, digital and social media to study content from leading global health advocates, practitioners and scholars. Discussion themes are developed in class debate and group work. At the end of the course, students who take the second stage elective, Work Based Placements (see below), also apply for advertised placement opportunities.

I-SEE (Individualised self-assessment to enhance employability)

Debbi Marais (Postgraduate Education Group) - This a bespoke online resource that has been developed to extend employability provision for PGT students. Students complete a self-assessment of employability skills which aligns with the UK Higher Education Academy employability profile for Health Studies and the University’s Taught Postgraduate Attributes (Academic Excellence; Critical Thinking & Communication; Learning & Personal Development and Active Citizenship). Based on the self-assessment, students receive individualised, automated responses with tailored feedback which identifies development areas and signposts appropriate support. Students are expected to record and reflect on their progress and use this to articulate skills and attributes in future employment applications.

Work-Based Placements

Lucia D'Ambruoso (IAHS) This course offers students professional placements with public, civic, voluntary, development sector organisations and government agencies. The placements are subject to availability and offered on a competitive basis. The course enhances students’ employability through engagement in a competitive application process; provides students with professional knowledge and understanding of strategic priorities and functions of a health and development sector organisation; and allows academic skills to be applied in work-based environments. Students gain a unique practical experience, a ‘real-world’ practical relevance to their work, a range of transferrable skills, professional connections and a stand-out CV.

Affiliated

Generic Skills

College of Life Sciences and Medicine - This aim of this course is to provide postgraduate students with all the tools necessary to carry out assignments, essays, presentations and practicals. These generic skills are vital to the student's success for the duration of the taught programme and are also essential skills that will help them in their future careers. Although this is not a credit-bearing course, attendance at lectures is compulsory.

Applied Statistics

Gordon Prescott (Medical Statistics) - This course equips the student with knowledge of statistical principles and statistical methods. It is taken by students registered for a wide range of IAHS MSc programmes and by some University staff although everyone attending lectures must be registered for the course

Epidemiology

Gareth Jones (Epidemiology) - This course provides a basic understanding of epidemiology - the study of the distribution and determinants of disease in the population. Topics covered include an introduction to epidemiology, causality and critical appraisal, and practical issues in conducting epidemiological studies.

Global Health

Lucia D'Ambruoso (IAHS) - This course is designed to provide students with knowledge and understanding of major global health concepts, issues, theories and practices, and the skills to critically appraise these debates. Students learn about established and emerging topics and how these intersect with broader social, economic, political and structural issues.

Health Services Research

Clare Robertson (HSRU) - The aim of the course is to equip students with the skills and information needed to appraise and undertake health services research. Topics covered include background to and purpose of health services research, the relationship of research and practice and experimental designs.

Public Health Seminars

Amudha Poobalan (Postgraduate Education Group) - The aim of this course is to develop an understanding of public health and how research skills can be applied in practice. Students will develop a critical awareness of the 3 domains of public health: health protection, health promotion and health service improvement. Topics covered by the course include: Health Care Needs and Services; Health Protection and Environmental Health; Health Improvement; Health Screening; Health Psychology; Health Economics; Organisation and Management of Healthcare; Policy and Strategy.

Qualitative Health Research

Helen Bedford (Academic Primary Care) & Kirsty Kiezebrink (HSRU) - This course introduces qualitative approaches and methods within health research, enabling students to gain insight into the practical realities of engaging in qualitative research. In addition to qualitative paradigms and methods for data collection and analysis, the processes and rationales involved in planning and conducting effective, rigorous and ethical qualitative research are explored.

Research Methods & Practice

Julia Allan (Health Psychology) - This course aims to provide students with an understanding of, and ability to apply, core social science research methods to health relevant questions within a professional, ethical framework. Topics covered include research design, ethics, questionnaire design, diary studies, data synthesis, secondary data analysis, dissemination and engagement.

Systematic Reviewing

Amudha Poobalan (Postgraduate Education Group) - This course will equip students with the relevant skills to interpret and conduct systematic reviews on the effectiveness of healthcare interventions. Students will understand the principles and main steps for undertaking systematic reviews by learning to formulate a research question; develop a study protocol; develop search strategies; critically appraise the primary studies; understand the principles of statistical data analysis and data synthesis; and Interpret/report results.

Economics of the Health Workforce

Bob Elliott (HERU) – In this course students will acquire a knowledge and understanding of the main theoretical and empirical methods in labour and personnel economics required to analyse the health workforce. Specifically they will acquire an understanding of: the role of the state and individuals in financing investment in the health workforce; the role of pay and reward structures in attracting, retaining and motivating the health workforce; the factors determining the composition of the health workforce; and the factors determining workforce mobility and migration.

Health Economics

Marjon van der Pol (HERU)- This course introduces students on the MSc in Economics to health economics. The course covers market failure in health care, cost benefit analysis, health inequalities and economics of the health workforce.

Health Economics option

Marjon van der Pol (HERU) - The course covers the core topics of health economics. It is not necessary to have studied health economics previously to benefit from this course and it will complement a broad range of other options.

The course emphasises a participative and cooperative approach to learning, and so you will be expected to both present material and contribute to group work.

Introduction to Health Economics

Marjon van der Pol (HERU) - In this course students explore demand, supply and markets for health care; market failure in health care; 'need' as an economic concept; financing and organising health care; economic approaches to health service evaluation; health economics research in practice; using health economics in the NHS environment; and economics of health behaviours

Medicine and Economics

Dwayne Boyers (HERU) - The course will provide an introduction to the application of economics to health care. Students will develop an appreciation of the role of economics in ensuring that available resources are used in the most effective and efficient way. They will also achieve a better understanding of the role of knowledge of economics in informed decision making in relation to a variety of issues, for example setting priorities between patients, choosing between new therapies and technologies and organising the provision of health care. The course will be delivered through lectures, specialised seminars and supervised self-directed learning.

Topics in Health Economics and Econometrics

Ramses Abul Naga (HERU)  –  this course introduces the major analytical methods used in health economics including both economic and econometric techniques. This course will enable student to apply microeconomic concepts and statistical techniques to problems in health economics by: (i) translating theoretical models into an empirically implementable form; (ii) analysing cross-section and panel data in a wide variety of problems encountered in the health literature

Valuation of Health and Health Care

Mandy Ryan (HERU)- In this course students will acquire a knowledge and understanding of the main theoretical and empirical methods in health economics to value healthcare interventions. Specifically they will acquire an understanding of the economic methods of: Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY); Contingent Valuation; Discrete Choice Experiments; and Health technology assessment and economic modelling

Health Behaviour & Behaviour Change

Marijn de Bruin (Health Psychology) - This course aims to provide a thorough introduction to which behaviours can protect, promote, risk or damage health; key theories about behaviour and behaviour change (including behaviour change techniques); and steps in the design of a (complex) behaviour change intervention.

Health Professional Behaviour

Dr Eilidh Duncan (Health Psychology) - This course examines how the behaviour of health professionals impacts on patient care and service delivery, explores the factors which influence health professional behaviour and outlines methods that can improve the uptake of evidence based practice by modifying health professional behaviour.

Illness, Disability & Interactions with Healthcare

Clare Cooper  (Health Psychology) - This course aims to explore how illness, disability and people's interactions with healthcare professionals and services are influenced by beliefs, perceptions and behaviours. Topics covered include symptom perceptions, quality of life, risk perception, coping with long term health conditions, pain management and death and bereavement.

Stress, Personality & Health

Clare Cooper (Health Psychology) - This course aims to explore the role of stress, personality and individual differences in health and to examine mechanisms by which such factors can be controlled and managed. Topics covered include theoretical models of stress and coping, psychoneuroimmunology, personality traits and emotions in health and illness.

Foundations of Nutrition

Janet Kyle (Postgraduate Education Group) - This course provides students with knowledge and understanding of the biochemical and metabolic processes essential to the study of human nutrition. Topics covered include an introduction to endocrinological, immunological and metabolic pathways relevant to nutrition, energy balance, and macro and micro nutrient uptake, metabolism and requirements.

Metabolic Nutrition

Janet Kyle (Postgraduate Education Group) - This specialism includes teaching on relationships between nutrition, health and disease at the metabolic level. There are lectures and practical classes on laboratory research methods (including immunoassay, chromatography, mass spectrometry and proteomics), gene-nutrient interactions, nutrition epidemiology, study design, research ethics and clinical nutrition.

Molecular Nutrition

Janice Drew (Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health) - This specialism includes teaching on relationships between nutrition, health and disease at the molecular level, state of the art technologies applied to molecular approaches to nutrition, including genomics, proteomics and metabolomics, nutrition and cellular signalling, molecular epidemiology, epigenetics and issues relating to nutrigenomics and society/bioethics and commercialisation.

Nutrition and Health

Janet Kyle (Postgraduate Education Group) - This course provides the student with an understanding of the relationship between diet, human development and health, and disease. Topics covered include an introduction to diet and nutrition across the life course, integration and adaptability of different metabolic pathways to starvation, malnutrition and exercise. Development of the skills required to select and critically appraise scientific literature and to design human nutrition research protocols will be integral to this course.

Public Health Nutrition

Kirsty Kiezebrink (HSRU) - This specialism includes teaching on relationships between nutrition, health and disease at the Public Health level, specialist teaching on survey methods, nutrition epidemiology, nutrition interventions in the community, nutrition policy, communicating nutrition advice at a population level, and a community nutrition attachment.