Year 1 - Master Global Health

Local (semester 2)

These modules are taken by all students.

In the second semester, the instruments available to governments to provide a local response to the abovementioned global issues will be discussed further. This consists of the organization of health systems, and health promotion and disease prevention, for which two courses are offered:

Health Care Systems

This course aims to provide insights into the basic rules concerning the organization of health care.

• In Part I, students learn about health-care actors and the way they are organized, work, learn and understand. The programme covers the usual topics of organization, financing, quality and personnel policy but also thinks about new organizational or financing models (community health, task-shifting, brain circulation).
• Part II deals with primary health care and how the vision has evolved over past decades.
• Part III pays specific attention to the economic aspects of health care. A health economic vision allows the health perspective to be properly connected to the economic. This understanding is crucial for making decisions about the organization of health care and programmes.

Health Promotion and Disease Prevention

After offering insights into general global health challenges and the frameworks within which they can be addressed (Global Health Governance and Leadership), this course will cover different methods of health promotion and disease prevention at different levels: in communities, using a policy- and settings-based approach, and in crisis situations.

• Part I: Health promotion and disease prevention in communities. Students learn about the steps that must be taken to develop qualitative community-oriented programmes, and acquire knowledge of models for individual behavioural changes and environmental changes.
• Part II: Health promotion and disease prevention using a policy- and settings-based approach, and in crisis situations. Students receive an introduction to the role of health promotion and disease prevention in the field of settings and policy. The students will learn about the objectives, forms and methods of promoting and preventive health settings and policy, and methods to achieve this within defined policy and structural levels.
• Part III: Health promotion and disease prevention in crisis situations. Students gain insights into the impact of global changes on the effects of hazards; on the types of hazards; risks; human vulnerability; the phases of disasters; risk management and the crisis management cycle; and risk reduction and control strategies that must prevent a natural hazard, an accident or an act of violence from becoming a disaster.

Transversal skills courses

Throughout semesters 1 and 2, there will be transversal skills courses:

Research Methods in Global Health IA

This course aims to provide students with insights into the most important methodologies needed to conduct and understand global health research.

• Part I: Epidemiology. This section gives students insights into the basic terminology and basic principles used in epidemiology.
• Part II: Introduction to statistics. This section provides a basis knowledge statistics.

Research Methods in Global Health IB

• Part III: Classic and modern data analysis. (Bio)statistical training for public health experts. Basic applications of biostatistics methodology for analysis of data from medical and public health research.
• Part IV: Evidence synthesis. This section introduces important concepts related to review and synthesis of existing scientific literature.

Essential Skills in Global Health I

This course aims to familiarize students with important skills needed to function professionally in the field of global health. Theoretical frameworks on complexity and complexity theory (Part I) are discussed, as are aspects of multiperspectivist thinking and acting (Part II). These perspectives are applied to global health problems by means of case studies.

Integrated Country Project

The programme pays particular attention to the practical application of the theory from Year 1 courses through the ‘integrated country project’. Each year, one specific focus country will be selected. Students will be divided into interdisciplinary groups and will be assigned a specific global health challenge in that country. For each theoretical course in the first year, students will need to apply the theory to that country-specific health problem. At the end of year 1, the combined papers will make up a comprehensive global health analysis of a particular country, that will be presented during a seminar in Ghent.