International health MSc programmes Online and on-campus www.blizard.qmul.ac.uk/study
Centre for Primary Care and Public Health MSc International Primary Health Care MSc Global Public Health and Policy MSc Health Systems and Global Policy 2012-13
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 a 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.
Outline description of the programmes Underpinned by a commitment to principles of social justice and fairness, these three new MSc programmes will provide you 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 widening health inequalities. Queen Mary has assembled for this initiative an experienced team who have previously established and run successful and highly prestigious programmes both online and on campus at UCL and the University of Edinburgh. The interdisciplinary programmes will be taught by Queen Mary academics who are both 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.
What skills and knowledge will you develop? The knowledge and analytic skills you will gain will enable you to address the challenges facing public health and primary care across a range of contexts. Your ability to plan and develop services and advocate for them will be greatly enhanced, and your 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 of the modules. You will have a unique opportunity to engage with current research programmes, the approaches and findings of which will inform the teaching programme. Who are the programmes for? 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, researchers, and NGO staff, and graduates in social science, science, 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 MSc 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
MSc Global Public Health and 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. Specialist module Advanced Social Determinants of Health
MSc Health Systems and Global Policy 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 modules Health Systems Reform and Planning; Globalisation and the Political Economy of Health
Structure of the programmes In the first semester, all three 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 • Health Systems, Economics, and Specialist modules • Primary Health Care: Theory and Practice • Advanced Social Determinants of Health • Health Systems Reform and Planning • Globalisation and the Political Economy of Health Elective modules • Patients, Quality, and Safety • Patients, Families, and Systems • Trade, Aid, and Health • Human Rights and Public Health • Managing Innovation and Change in Health Systems: Policy and Practice • Intellectual Property, Pharmaceuticals, and Health Care
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). They are available in both face-toface and distance learning, the latter being delivered via a state-of-the-art interactive learning environment.
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 given here as general guidance. Up to date and correct fees can be found at www.qmul.ac.uk 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)
• Migration and Health • Contemporary Medical Ethics Dissertation
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. She was described by Professor Michael Kidd, President of the World Association of Family Doctors 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 the Order of the British Empire for Services to Medicine from Her Majesty the Queen.
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 Steve Cummins is professor of geography, with training in epidemiology and public health. He researches the contextual and socioenvironmental determinants of health and the design and evaluation of community social and policy interventions to improve population health. His Healthy Environments Research Programme covers projects including the National Evaluation of the Healthy Towns Programme and the Olympic Regeneration in East London Study, investigating the health and social impact of urban regeneration associated with the 2012 Olympics.
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.
Professor Parvati Nair is professor of hispanic, cultural and migration studies and director of the Centre for the Study of Migration. Her research is in theories and representations of migration, mobility, urban spaces, displacement, ethnicity and gender. Her publications focus on photography, film and music in these contexts and rely on an interdisciplinary approach that includes fieldwork. She is the principal editor of Crossings: journal of migration and culture.
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.
Professor Clive Seale is professor of medical sociology. He edits the journal Sociology of health and illness, and has authored and edited many books including The quality of qualitative research and Researching society and culture. His work involves sociolinguistic studies of gender and illness experience, mass media representations of illness, doctors’ and nurses’ decision making in end-of-life care, and multilingual consultations in primary care.
Key staff
Primary Care and Public Health Based in Whitechapel in the heart of London’s East End and yet close to its financial centre, the Centre for Primary Care and Public Health brings together some of the UK’s leading researchers in 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 only 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 End, 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.
Queen Mary, University of London Queen Mary, University of London is recognised as one of the UK’s leading research-based institutions. Our mission is to continue the highest standards of research and provide the finest possible education to our 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 wider society. Queen Mary has served its local community since it was founded in 1887 as the People’s Palace. Admitted to the University of London in 1915, we are now among its three largest colleges, and the only one with a fully integrated
campus, where students can live, study, and socialise. London is one of the world’s great cities, culturally rich and always inspiring and exciting. Living in London gives you access to the finest museums, art galleries, theatre, and music, as well as cuisines from every part of the globe. The 2012 Olympic Games will be one more extraordinary development in the life of London, and will leave behind some of the UK’s best ever sporting and recreation facilities, as well as some of its largest urban open spaces, just two miles from the University. Queen Mary is based in the lively and diverse area of east London. The hub of London’s creative, technological, and cultural community, it represents the best of the city – rich in history, yet always looking to the future, and ethnically diverse, while retaining a uniquely British character.
Further information
Informal approaches are welcome at any time. If you wish to discuss the programmes, 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 EH1 2AB
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