London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Course overview

Each year, there are roughly 10 million new-born, child, adolescent, maternal, and stillborn deaths. Most of these deaths and linked disabilities can be prevented if evidence-based interventions are implemented.

By signing up for this course, you’ll learn from the world’s leading experts with direct experience improving the health of women, children and adolescents across the globe. They’ll take you on a unique and compelling learning journey, summarising the latest data, evidence, and research gaps in an accessible way.

Explore the lifecycle from birth to adulthood

The course will run over six weeks, exploring the lifecycle from birth to adulthood, to look at adolescent, reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health.

Each week will focus on a different area, inviting you to discuss the most recent data, and the current policy, programme and research debates that inform action to improve health outcomes.

At the end of the course we will reflect on the importance of lifecycle thinking for women, children and adolescents in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030.

Topics covered include:

• The health of adolescents and young people
• Reproductive health and what it means to make every birth wanted
• The health of women during pregnancy, whilst giving birth and during the postnatal period
• Newborns and stillbirths in the global health agenda
• The health of children and the progress made to reduce their mortality.

Get multiple perspectives on maternal and child health

The Centre for Maternal, Adolescent, Reproductive, and Child Health (MARCH) is the central hub for women’s and children’s health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and comprises more than 150 academics working around the world in 100 countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. In this course, you will hear from MARCH Centre experts in a range of disciplines, including epidemiology, demography, anthropology, medicine and public health.

Contributors include:

• Professor Joy Lawn - Director of the MARCH Centre
• Professor David Ross - World Health Organization Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health.

What will you achieve?

Through the use of case studies, multimedia content and discussions with other learners from around the globe, we will consider the latest evidence about how to improve the health of women, children and adolescents in the context of different country settings.

By the end of the course, you'll be able to...

• Investigate health across the lifecycle, from newborn to child, to adolescents and women, in areas of the world where the burden of disease is highest
• Engage with how different stages of the lifecycle affect each other
• Evaluate the evidence on what causes poor health outcomes and what is known about how to prevent them

Who is the course for?

This course is designed for healthcare professionals or anyone working in a health organisation; undergraduate students taking a healthcare or science-related degree; medical students and postgraduates wishing to complement their studies; and anyone else with an interest in learning about the health of women, children and adolescents.

This course follows on from our previous MARCH MOOC, which reached more than 26,000 participants across 130 countries.