Principles of Public Health
[ CK050 ]

Life expectancy increased in the past decades, but will this remain to be the case? While public health strategies contributed to improvements in population health, major challenges remain. Improving population health in the next decade(s) requires a thorough analysis of current challenges, their causes and solutions. In this course, students will learn the concepts and methods for an analysis of the health of the population, the identification of the main causes, and the evaluation of strategies to improve population health. Summary measures of population health and the impact of diseases on population health will be start of the course, followed by a life course perspective on multilevel determinants of health. Variations in health will be investigated with mediation analysis. Students will also be introduced in mixed method approaches for the evaluation of public health strategies, including natural experiments.

For students in our master programmes, the core concepts presented in this course will be assessed in the core competences exam that bundles the fall semester courses. This is in addition to the assessment during the course in the form of assignment(s). The core competences exam is only mandatory for students starting their programme in August 2021 or later, while the assignments during the course are mandatory for all participating students.

You can view a view examples of the group assigment here

After the course, students are able to

• Identify major population health challenges

• Quantitatively evaluate the contribution of important determinants of population health

• Develop and evaluate intervention strategies and policies

Early career researchers in public health, epidemiology or the social sciences who want to know how to come up with the best solutions for important population health problems and want to apply public health and epidemiological methods to do so.

Assignment(s), Attendance