London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

In this module students will be introduced to a range of different approaches and methods for promoting health at the individual, community and population levels. There is no simple divide between ‘effective’ and ‘ineffective’ methods. Instead different methods will be effective at achieving different aims with different groups in different contexts. A health promotion programme which is designed to address the multiple determinants of a public health problem is likely to consist of a number of interventions. So although necessarily arranged in discrete lectures, you should consider these approaches and methods as potentially complementary rather than as competitors.

The overall module aim is to provide students with an overview and critical appreciation of a range of approaches and methods for promoting health, at the individual, community and population levels.

Intended learning outcomes

Upon successful completion of the module a student should be able to:

1. Describe a range of different approaches and methods for promoting health and their theoretical underpinnings;
2. Critically evaluate the approaches and methods covered in the module and their strengths and weaknesses;
3. Assess the appropriate application of different approaches and methods in a variety of contexts.

Mode of delivery

This module is delivered predominantly face-to-face. Where specific teaching methods (lectures, seminars, discussion groups) are noted in this module specification these will be delivered by predominantly face-to-face sessions. There will be a combination of live and interactive activities (synchronous learning) as well as recorded or self-directed study (asynchronous learning).

Assessment

The assessment for this module has been designed to measure student learning against the module intended learning outcomes (ILOs) as listed above. Formative assessment methods may be used to measure students’ progress. The grade for summative assessment(s) only will go towards the overall award GPA.

Students will be asked to select a public health issue of interest to them (e.g. CHD, alcohol misuse, mental health, nutrition or anything else relevant to public health) and to pick one of the approaches/methods from the module, and then use their essay to consider how that approach/method could be applied to that particular problem.

Credits

• CATS: 15
• ECTS: 7.5

Module specification

For full information regarding this module please see the module specification.