International health MSc programmes Online and on-campus blizard.qmul.ac.uk/study
Centre for Primary Care and Public Health MSc Global Public Health and Policy MSc International Primary Health Care MSc Health Systems and Global Policy MSc Global Health, Law and Governance
2013-14
Primary Care and Public Health Based in Whitechapel in the heart of east London, yet also close to the capital’s financial centre, the Centre for Primary Care and Public Health brings together some of the UK’s leading researchers in public policy and community-based health sciences who share a commitment to reducing health inequalities and promoting universal health care in and beyond the UK. The Centre is responsible for leading global health teaching in Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, the first UK medical school to include global health in the undergraduate medical curriculum. With strong links to NHS, local authorities, and other organisations in the east London, and with a programme of international research with which students can engage, the Centre combines the local and the global in a stimulating and challenging research and teaching environment.
Aims and objectives High-quality primary health care and public health systems are a cornerstone of an efficient, effective, and equitable health system. Many countries are seeking to shift from a hospital-led health care system to one characterised by population focus and a strong primary care sector. 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. High quality education and training in primary care and public health is key to assuring the health of a population in any country. Underpinned by a commitment to principles of social justice and fairness, these four MSc programmes 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 in a time of increasing health inequalities.
Outline description of the programmes The programmes are run by an experienced team, assembled by Queen Mary for this initiative, who have previously established and run successful and highly prestigious programmes both online and on campus at other universities.
Through the knowledge and analytic skills they have gained, students can address the challenges facing public health and primary care across a range of contexts. Their ability to plan and develop services and advocate for them will be greatly enhanced, and their effectiveness in delivering health care and public services will be increased. Strong emphasis is placed on research methods and analytic techniques for practical application or further research, and research methods are integrated into many modules. Students will have a unique opportunity to engage with current research programmes, the approaches and findings of which will inform the teaching programme.
The interdisciplinary programmes will be taught by Queen Mary academics who are leaders in their field – in public health sciences, law, sociology, geography, migration studies, economics, management, social policy and clinical medicine – and influential in policy developments in the UK and internationally. They have come together to offer a multidisciplinary focus on global public health and primary care in a time of widening health inequalities.
The programmes are designed to be accessible to students from diverse professional and disciplinary backgrounds, including GPs, hospital doctors and paramedical staff, primary care workers, public health practitioners, policy makers, lawyers, researchers, and NGO staff, and graduates in social science, science, law, medicine, nursing, and other related disciplines. Students seeking career change or enhancement will be well equipped for policy positions and for public health and clinical practice in the field and in academia, in the UK and abroad. GPs and other practising health care workers will see their ability to plan and develop services and advocate for them greatly enhanced, and their effectiveness in delivering health care increased.
The programmes Global Public Health and Policy
Health Systems and Global Policy
This programme builds on models of social determinants of health and international health concepts of policymaking at the extra-territorial level. Students can specialise in areas as diverse as trade in health, global burden of disease, evidence based policy making, pharmaceuticals, clinical trials, and ethics. The programme is of particular interest to public health doctors and other health practitioners in public and primary health care, but will also attract policy makers and NGO workers and social and laboratory scientists.
This programme considers how the principles and practice of effective and fair public health care can inform health policy and health care systems in national and local settings. An important focus of the programme will be the theoretical and practical principles of solidarity in health care systems. The programme analyses the principles of health systems, and makes global linkages to social, political, economic, and cultural issues in individual countries and themes. Students will gain an understanding of competition and trade law and regulation and its application to public health care. This programme is of particular interest to medical and clinical practitioners, civil servants, public health practitioners, social and political scientists, lab scientists, and NGO workers.
Specialist module: Social Determinants of Health: Ecological Approaches
International Primary Health Care This programme is modelled on an award-winning online MSc previously run by the same team through the University of London External System. The vision is to build a vibrant inter-professional and interdisciplinary learning community of primary care practitioners who will work together under the guidance of expert tutors to explore how the principles and practice of effective primary health care may be achieved in different countries, health care systems, and local settings. There is no clinical component to this MSc, though students with a particular clinical interest (eg, diabetes, women’s health) will be encouraged to apply their knowledge to this area. Specialist module: Primary Health Care: Theory and Practice
*NOTE: THE MSC, GLOBAL HEALTH, LAW AND GOVERNANCE IS CURRENTLY AWAITING FORMAL APPROVAL. PLEASE CONSULT THE WEBSITE OR CONTACT US FOR UP TO DATE INFORMATION
Specialist modules: Globalisation and Health Care Reform
Global Health, Law and Governance* This programme, a collaboration between the Centre for Primary Care and Public Health, the Department of Law, and the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, analyses the key international organisations and legal instruments that national public health policies. It critically examines the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank, and key international conventions and protocols. This programme will appeal to all those medical practitioners, civil servants, lawyers, social and political scientists, and NGO workers – with an involvement in health policy and health systems. Specialist modules: Intellectual Property, Medicine and Health
Structure of the programmes In the first semester the four programmes share modules developing the key concepts and research methods and analysis. These present students with relevant methodological issues and challenges while providing interdisciplinary foundations. In the second semester students gain a more detailed understanding of areas relevant to their programmes and interests through specialist and elective modules. Each programme is differentiated by a designated specialist module and by the focus of the dissertation. Core modules • Epidemiology and Statistics • Health, Illness and Society • Health Inequalities and Social Determinants of Health
Specialist modules • Social Determinants of Health: Ecological Approaches • Primary Health Care: Theory and Practice • Globalisation and Health Care Reform • Intellectual Property, Medicine and Health
Dissertation
• Health Systems, Economics, and Policy • Public Health, International Law and Governance (for MSc Global Health, Law, and Governance)
Elective modules • Globalisation and Contemporary Medical Ethics • Research Appraisal and Synthesis • Migration, Culture and Health • Patients, Quality and Safety • Human Rights and Public Health • Managing Innovation and Change in Health Systems: Policy and Practice • Global Politics of Health • Narrative Medicine in Clinical Practice: Patients, Families and Systems
Modes of study The MSc programmes can be completed in one year on a full-time basis, up to three years part-time, or up to five years on a ‘variable mode’ basis (ie, modular or portfolio).
Flexible learning Whilst this is an academic programme of study primarily intended to lead to a postgraduate degree, students can choose to take individual modules either for assessed study or for non-assessed contribution towards their professional development.
Fees These fees are from 2012-13 and a are given as general guidance. Up to date and correct fees can be found at www.qmul.ac.uk/postgraduate/ tuitionfees Full-time: UK/EU £6,000; overseas £10,000 Part-time: UK/EU £3,000; overseas £5,000 per year (for two years, or pro rata for longer) Bench fees: £300
Professor Allyson Pollock is professor of public health research and policy and co-director of the Global Health, Policy and Innovation Unit. An internationally known scholar in public health medicine, she was recently described by The Lancet as one “of the UK’s leading public intellectuals in medicine”. Through her research she brings the wide range of public health disciplines – epidemiological, geographical, legal, economic, political – to bear on important issues in public health and health policy, and particularly in relation to how financing and policy impact on universal and equitable health care provision. Her research covers globalisation, marketisation and privatisation of public services, pharmaceuticals, and health inequalities. She has strong links to developing public health programmes in low and middle income countries.
Professor Trish Greenhalgh is professor of primary health care and co-director of the Global Health, Policy and Innovation Unit. Described as “one of the international stars of general practice” she is the author of eight textbooks including Primary health care: theory and practice and How to read a paper: the basics of evidence-based medicine. She leads a research programme on new technologies in health care, cross-cultural health and the personal dimension of health and illness (narrative based medicine). She was programme director for the world’s first fully online MSc programme in primary health care from 1998 to 2010. In 2001, she received an OBE for Services to Medicine.
Professor Richard Ashcroft is professor of bioethics within the Department of Law and is co-director of the Centre for the Study of Incentives in Health. His research covers human rights theory, law and practice in bioethics policy, and ethical challenges in public health. His particular interest is biomedical research ethics: he is a member of the Ethics and Policy Advisory Committee of the UK Medical Research Council and Director of the Appointing Authority for Phase I Ethics Committees.
Professor Sandra Eldridge is Professor of Biostatistics and joint lead of the Centre for Primary Care and Public Health. With a background in mathematics and postgraduate training in health services research, she is an internationally recognised authority in the methodology of randomised controlled trials. Her research interests include cluster randomised trials, the development and evaluation of complex interventions, especially the use of mathematical modelling to refine complex interventions, and systematic review. She leads an international collaborative research programme on complex intervention trials.
Professor Johanna Gibson is Herchel Smith Professor of Intellectual Property Law and director of the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute in the Centre for Commercial Law Studies. She is also the director of the independent research charity, the Intellectual Property Institute. She is Chair of the UK Intellectual Property Office Expert Advisory Committee on Trade and Development and a member of the DG-Research and Innovation expert panel on international knowledge transfer. Johanna holds first class degrees in cultural and critical theory, animal sciences, and law.
Dr Dave McCoy is a senior clinical lecturer in the social determinants of health, and head of Public Health Intelligence for Inner North West London. He worked in South Africa for 10 years in rural hospitals, public health and health systems development, higher education, and NGOs. He is a member of the steering council for the Peoples’ Health Movement and was managing editor for both the first and second Global Health Watch (an alternative world health report). He is the programme lead for intercalated global health.
Professor Maxine Robertson is professor of innovation and organisation in the School of Business and Management. Her research focuses on the interrelated areas of networked innovation, knowledge work, and professional identity. Most of Maxine’s research is conducted within the biomedical sector, drawing upon the drug development process as a prime exemplar of networked innovation. Maxine is a member of the UK National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence Implementation Strategy Group.
Dr Petra Sevcikova is senior lecturer in health systems. An experienced lecturer at postgraduate level, she is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She trained in economics, and her research focuses on the regulation of the pharmaceutical industry, such as standards of quality, and the intersection of economic and public health issues related to the international harmonisation and enforcement of such regulations. She is the MSc programmes lead.
Key staff
Queen Mary, University of London Queen Mary, University of London is recognised as one of the UK’s leading research-based institutions, and has recently joined the Russell Group. Its mission is to continue the highest standards of research and provide the finest possible education to its students within and outside the UK, while remaining committed to the idea of the university as a community of scholars, mutually supportive and working both to further knowledge creation and benefit the wider society.
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Further information
Informal approaches are welcome at any time. Please contact: Dr James Lancaster +44 (0)20 7882 7212 j.p.lancaster@qmul.ac.uk Centre for Primary Care and Public Health, 58 Turner Street, London E1 2AB
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