96702 Foundations in Public Health

This subject is designed to provide an overview of conceptual underpinnings of public health, introduce key approaches, and apply these to a range of contemporary issues that impact on health. It first critically examines some of the different conceptions of health including personal, lay, non-Western, and organisational definitions. In the second module, several different models of public health are considered and how population-level approaches differ from those of the individual focus of the medical sector are discussed. Included is a brief examination of several public health processes and models – research, advocacy, implementation, prevention and promotion – that are central to public health. There are then applies to a range of key challenges, including communicable and non-communicable diseases, globalisation, environmental sustainability and social justice.

Subject learning objectives (SLOs)

Upon successful completion of this subject students should be able to:

A. Appraise public health scholarship/thinking and its major components
B. Contrast the different and comparable elements of biomedical and public health perspectives/approaches to health issues
C. Analyse and relate the historical and disciplinary roots of contemporary public health
D. Describe the role and contribution of different health fields to public health scholarship
E. Recognise a range of key international public health issues
F. Appraise the relevance and insights of public health to a number of important substantive topics currently challenging health systems, health care and health outcomes

Course expectations, requirements, OPELA, meeting your fellow students Module 1: SOCIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL UNDERSTANDINGS OF HEALTH

Part 1:

Lay and non-medical understandings of health Sociological assessments of health

Part 2:

Critiquing institutional definitions of health Non-Western and feminist understandings of health

Module 2: THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Part 1:

Defining public health The burden of disease The social determinants of health Key public health challenges (demographic change, climate change, non-communicable and communicable diseases, increasing cost of care, inequalities)

Part 2:

Key public health challenges (demographic change, climate change, non-communicable and communicable diseases, increasing cost of care, inequalities) The ‘old’ public health and biomedical models The new public health

Module 3: Key APPROACHES IN PUBLIC HEALTH

Other key models and approaches to public health: Prevention models, health promotion, primary health care,
ethics, etc.

Introduction to research methods and designs used in public health