Global Public Health

Module 1: Policy and Practice

We address the fundamental public health question of how best to finance and organise health systems in order to achieve universal health coverage and the effective delivery of comprehensive PHC. We will be particularly concerned with the ways in which health care systems differ from the perspective of access to services among different social groups within the population, and with the distributive effects of different organising principles such as market and public control.

The relationship between health systems and the Primary Health Care Approach will be covered, as well as key debates around the interface between aid, global health governance and national health systems. This module will also cover the essential economic theories used to inform health systems policy.

Module 2: Epidemiology and Statistics

The module will include case studies to explore contemporary policy debates and the influence of quantitative research studies on public health and primary care policy and government intervention programmes. The advantages and disadvantages of different study designs and their application to different research questions will be covered.

Students will gain skills in summarising quantitative data, including routine morbidity and mortality measures and interpreting the results of commonly used statistical techniques.

Module 3: Health inequalities and social determinants of health

This module will examine the theories and evidence underpinning social inequalities in health (defined as the unfair and avoidable differences in health status). It will consider structural/material and psychosocial theories, and hypothesis about social drift, self-selection, and genetics. Attention is given to the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health. Sources of data and measurement of scale of inequalities between and within groups are addressed.

The module will consider association with income and distribution of money, resources, and power at global, national, and local level. Policy interventions and their different approaches will be explored including universal and targeted or selective approaches to reducing inequalities by reducing the inequitable distribution of power, money, and resources.

Module 4: Governance and Law

The protection of public health at the national and subnational level often depends significantly on various decisions made at the international or global level by regimes, including those related to trade, finance, law, diplomacy and inter-governmental relations. Such regimes can have a profound impact on the determinants of health as experienced within countries, at the national and local levels, and have become increasingly important as a result of ever-deepening forms of `globalisation’ and the threat of global hazards to health such as large-scale global environmental change.

This module provides an introduction to the disciplines of international relations, international politics, international jurisprudence, globalization and global governance as they relate to global health. It will examine the content and operation of various supra-national policy instruments, structures, institutions and processes, and place these within the context of the right to health and contemporary controversies and topical issues being confronted by the global health community.