Preventive Health Issues in Daily Life: an Interdisciplinary Approach

The prevention of chronic and infectious diseases has become increasingly important due to the growing burden on healthcare systems worldwide. With rising rates of chronic conditions, preventing these diseases can significantly reduce healthcare costs and improve quality of life. Additionally, effective infection prevention strategies, are essential to protect public health and prevent future outbreaks. Understanding preventive health requires the ability to connect insights from various scientific disciplines, not only from the social sciences (e.g., to study the societal drivers of public health or to understand how health behaviors arise) but also from disciplines that study the physical origins of diseases. This also emphasizes the multifaceted nature of health, which is not merely the absence of disease but a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being (World Health Organization), and it highlights that solutions to improve health in daily life are multifactorial. Preventable diseases can be distinguished into infectious diseases (e.g., food poisoning, zoonoses) and non-communicable diseases (e.g., obesity, type 2 diabetes). In this course, students will acquire the knowledge and skills to adopt an interdisciplinary approach to preventive health, effectively integrating different scientific disciplines sciences. They will also learn to appreciate the synergies that can arise from such approaches. The course will cover a range of emerging topics related to preventive health in daily life.

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

• Develop an interdisciplinary perspective to explain preventive health issues in the daily life
• Gain insight into the origins and solutions of contemporary preventive health issues
• Apply interdisciplinary research methodologies and recognize their synergy in understanding preventive health issues.