Epidemiology and Public Health Policies

This course is one of the core-courses for future public health professionals aiming at a career in the public and private sector. In this course students learn how public health policy and interventions are developed.
In society, health is an important asset as it is a resource for everyday living. It enables children to go to school and develop their potential, adults to work and care for their families and elderly to remain involved in society. Health is more than an individual matter; the functioning of our society depends on healthy people. Therefore, it is of great importance to optimize health and its related lifestyle factors (healthy diet, moderate alcohol consumption, non-smoking, physical activity etc.). Analysis of major health problems and their determinants is needed to develop public health policies and programmes that intend to result in considerable health gains in the long term.
In this course methods will be introduced and explained which support the planning and implementation of public health policies and programmes. Relevant theories, concepts and tools will be presented, and illustrated with practical examples. For this purpose, the public health cycle will be introduced. This planning model provides a basic framework for professionals working in the field of public health that can be used for planning, implementing and evaluating policies and programmes. This planning model includes the following seven steps: conduct a needs assessment, support priority setting, formulate aims and objectives, construct a logic model, develop an evaluation plan, perform quality control, and analyse processes and outcomes.

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:

• Explain the public health system and working processes that are applied in the public health sector, namely the first 4 steps in the public health cycle: conduct a needs assessment, support priority setting, formulate aims and objectives and construct a logic model.
• Prioritize health problems, based on scientific literature and research reports (e.g. WHO) in a needs assessment.
• Prioritize determinants related to health problems, based on scientific literature and research reports.
• Evaluate existing aims and objectives of public health interventions.
• Prioritize policy instruments as part of a logic model.
• Develop an intervention programme, by applying steps 1-4 in the public health cycle to a concrete health problem of a selected country.

Assumed Knowledge:
HNH28303 Introduction Descriptive Epidemiology and Public Health, HNH28803 Introduction Analytical Epidemiology and Public Health (distance learning courses) or the on campus equivalent HNH24806 Introduction to Epidemiology and Public Health.