Course in Health Promotion and Disease Control Strategies

Course Content

The following subjects are reviewed during the course:

• Introduction to Health Promotion and Control Strategies
• People-Centred and Integrated Healthcare
• Holistic health approaches: Planetary health and one health
• Health Communication
• UHC: Primary care and reorientation of care
• Collaboration and cooperation across sectoral and transdisciplinary approaches: Health in all policies
• Public Health Leadership and Governance
• Nutrition: lifecycle approach, influence transition on policy making
• Digital Health
• Prevention and control of non-communicable diseases
• Cardiovascular diseases: Lifestyle and behaviour change
• Health system approaches for control of vector-borne diseases
• Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) focus: integration in broader strategies
• Chronic disease: focus: surveillance and screening
• Community engagement: case study drug resistance
• Activism, Advocacy, and community mobilisation: case study climate change and health
• Expanded programme on Immunisation: Vaccine hesitancy, gaining public trust, and community engagement
• Public health emergencies preparedness and response
• Humanitarian health interventions: rational priority setting, planning for subpopulations, human rights perspectives
• Global Health and commercial determinants of health ethics: Journal Club

Content

Uncover the Depths of Health Promotion and Disease Control:

Explore the intricacies of communicable and non-communicable diseases through a lens of holistic health systems approaches. Our course goes beyond the ordinary, fostering critical discussions on the strengths and weaknesses of health promotion and control programs, with a keen eye on promoting health equity.

Expert-Guided Exploration:

Delve into a wealth of knowledge curated by a unique cadre of field experts hailing from top universities, research centres and organizations around the world. Stay ahead with the latest innovations as our course continually evolves to embrace emerging trends, including human-centred approaches and Planetary Health.

Learning Beyond Boundaries:

Our course transcends the traditional boundaries of disease control, encompassing wider risk factors and systemic health issues. Gain insights into advocacy, human rights perspectives, priority setting, and the design of health promotion and control programs. Sessions culminate in overarching issues crucial for effective strategy formulation.

Rich Learning Units:

The course offers a comprehensive learning experience with units covering health promotion, human-centred healthcare approaches, advocacy, communication skills, and much more, from the prevention of non-communicable diseases to the complex landscape of humanitarian health. Engage in interactive lectures, field visits, peer feedback, group work to reinforce your understanding.

Practical, Competency-Based Education:

Built upon principles that recognize your existing knowledge and experience, our course is problem-oriented and aims at practical applications. Enhance your competencies to implement and evaluate context-specific approaches, ensuring you are well-equipped to address real-world health challenges.

Connect, Collaborate, and Catalyze Change:

Join a community of like-minded professionals, share experiences, and collaborate on solutions. Be part of a transformative learning environment that fosters not just academic growth but also the development of practical skills essential for navigating the complexities of public health.

This course replaces the former course Control Strategies for Communicable and Non-Communicable Diseases (CCND).

This course is tropEd accredited and can be followed as a stand-alone course or as a specialisation course of the Master in Public Health and Health Equity programme.

Learning methods

A great variety of learning methods are used, most importantly:

• Interactive lectures reflecting on your own experiences
• Case studies
• Field visit
• Peer feedback
• Group work and discussions
• Background reading materials

As this course is for participants with some experience already in public health, the educational approach is based on the following principles:

• Takes the knowledge and (working) experience of the participants as a starting point
• Is problem-oriented and is focused on the practical application of the course content
• Is competency-based and aims at improving the competencies of participants to implement and evaluate context-specific approaches to address health problems.

Assessment:

For participants who wish to receive a certificate of completion of the course, including the ECTS credits, the assessment is required.

If you do not wish to do the assessment, you can receive a certificate of attendance of the course.

Objectives

At the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Compare and contrast the approaches to the health promotion and control of communicable diseases (CDs) and non-communicable diseases (NCDs)
• Analyse and critically discuss the strengths and weaknesses of health system strategies for health promotion and control with a special focus on health equity
• Use evidence to formulate and clearly communicate context-appropriate strategies for health promotion or control of a specific health issue or disease