INTRODUCTION TO EPIDEMIOLOGY (3 CREDITS)
Objectives
- Introduce students to the subject and methods of Epidemiology, emphasizing how it forms one of the foundations of public health practice and research;
- Emphasize the distinctive components of the epidemiological approach: measurement, comparison, and inference, as well as the different roles of epidemiology in description of a situation, looking for trends over time, exploring associations, predicting outcomes, investigating epidemics, and establishing causal links in disease occurrence;
- Introduce students to elements of epidemiological study design, and basic concepts such as reliability, validity, bias, and confounding; and
- Introduce some of the basic software for epidemiological data analysis such as EPI-INFO and EPI-DATA
BASIC BIOSTATISTICS (4 CREDITS)
Objectives
- To introduce fundamentals of Biostatistics. Emphasis will be on the concepts of statistics, principles of statistical data analysis and interpretation of findings.
- The course module consists of about 5 class hours per week and 60 class hours for the entire course that consists of lecture sessions and lab/workshop sessions.
HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT (3 CREDITS)
Objectives
- Provide an in-depth understanding of various frameworks on social determinants of health and inter linkages between health and development at local, national and global levels and be able to apply that in health program planning.
- Introduce the concepts and indicators of development, globalization and poverty and be able to apply Health Impact Assessment (HIA) as a methodology to assess the impact of development policies on health
- To familiarize the concepts of health equity and various sources of inequalities in health and the policy and program approaches to promote health equity and make health services accessible to the poor.
HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT (3 CREDITS)
Objectives
- The course on health and environment is designed to enable students of public health to
- Understand the environmental determinants of human and ecosystem health
- Learn the basic concepts of environmental health sciences and key environmental health issues with a global perspective
- Develop approaches for assessment, prevention and control of environmental and occupational health issues that pose risk to human health
BASIC HEALTH ECONOMICS (2 CREDITS)
Objectives
- This course approaches health care from the economist's point of view. The objective of the course is to teach basic conceptual tools and theoretical ideas of micro and macro economics as applied to issues within health care systems, as well as costing and cost analyses.
GENDER ISSUES IN HEALTH (2 CREDITS)
Objectives
- To recognize the relevance of gender in public health
- To learn to use gender as an analytical category in public health research
- To develop skills to apply gender analysis in planning, advocacy and implementation of public health policies and programmes
ETHICS IN PUBLIC HEALTH (2 CREDITS)
Objectives
- Enable recognition of the various concepts of ethics in health research
- Develop knowledge of the existing guidelines for ethics in health research and
- Develop skills to identify ethical problems in health research and use ethical principles to resolve them
- Sensitise participants to the ethical issues that come up in the course of public health practice
- Facilitate ethically informed decisions, policies and programmes
- Equip participants with skills to advocate for ethical decision making
HEALTH POLICY ANALYSIS I (2 CREDITS)
Objectives
- Introduce students to different types of health systems existing in the world, their merits and demerits
- Familiarize students with concepts relating to health systems such as coverage, financing, quality of care, regulation, insurance etc
- Impart a general understanding of the logic and process of public policy-making in health
- To enable students to undertake preliminary analysis of health policy issues and decisions based on this understanding
- Introduce students to some analytical tools such as policy relevant epidemiology, economic analysis, decision analysis, qualitative methods and log-frame analysis used in policy studies Enable students to understand the role of consultancy in the policy process, with emphasis on the value of communication skills.
HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IN INDIA (2 CREDITS)
Objectives
- Understand the philosophy and organization of healthcare system in India
- Analyze major national health programs from a public health perspective.
- Evaluate healthcare system functioning in different states, organizations and institutions.
- Explore and identify critical gaps and probable solutions
HEALTH MANAGEMENT (4 CREDITS)
Objectives
- The objective of the course is to equip the students with necessary skills of management and managerial analysis.
- At the end of the course it will help them to communicate effectively. The students will develop social values for managing public health and learn to apply the basic skills of management. The course will inculcate leadership qualities and articulation.
- At the end of the course the students will understand how the organizational factors influence the health services and health of population. Since there are four parts for the module there can be four objectives also.
QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS (2 CREDITS)
Objectives
- At the end of the course module the participants will be able to identify an appropriate topic for research in general and for the MPH dissertation in particular, frame research questions, select an appropriate study design and methods of data collection, develop tools for data collection, collect data, enter data using Excel or SPSS, analyze data, and write a report
ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES IN HEALTH (1 CREDIT)
Objectives
- To understand the relevance of medical anthropological research for public health
- To study the anthropological approach to health research in terms of concepts, theories and methods
- To learn the use of medical anthropological approaches for the study of particular health conditions and/or systems
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS (2 CREDITS)
Objectives
- To identify the need for qualitative approaches to research in public health
- To recognize the complementary nature of this approach to research
- To gain an understanding of some of the qualitative methods relevant for Public Health: their use and limitations
- To learn to use these qualitative methods appropriately and
- To be able to undertake analysis of data collected using qualitative methods
CHRONIC DISEASE EPIDEMIOLOGY (2 CREDITS)
Objectives
- At the end of the course module the participants will be able to understand importance of chronic non-communicable diseases, trends, distribution, common NCDs, major risk factors of NCDs, WHO steps approach for NCD risk factor surveillance and prevention and control of NCDs at various levels.
INFECTIOUS DISEASE EPIDEMIOLOGY (2 CREDITS)
Objectives
- Familiarize with common public health pathogens and understand the immuno-physiology of infection in human body.
- Understand the ecology of emergence, progression and remission of infectious diseases in the community.
- Comprehend various infectious disease control modalities including investigation of an outbreak.
- Understand the epidemiology of infectious entities of public health importance.
INTERMEDIATE EPIDEMIOLOGY (2 CREDITS)
Objectives
- Introduce students already familiar with basic concepts in epidemiology to data analysis, inference and reporting;
- Introduce students to three basic approaches in data analysis: description, exploration, and hypothesis testing;
- Expose students to basic tools of epidemiologic analysis such as crude and stratified analysis, and model building;
- Develop the students judgment so as to enable them to differentiate concepts such as confounding, mediation and effect modification
HEALTH POLICY ANALYSIS - II (1 CREDIT)
Objectives
- Provide an in-depth understanding of health systems, their characteristics and functions
- Introduce the concept of health sector reforms, and variations in their scope (national, sub national, regional) and nature (sectoral, system wide) across regions and countries
- Understand conceptual tools to examine the consequences of reforms for the health sector in different contexts
- Gain knowledge of the global trends in health sector reforms in financing, public-private interactions and decentralization and be acquainted with the Indian scenario.
- Learn to critically analyse the implications of specific types of reforms (financing, public-private interactions and decentralization) on health services.
INTERMEDIATE BIOSTATISTICS (4 CREDITS)
Objectives
- To introduce and familiarize with the commonly used statistical methods to assess associations and derive inferences. By the end of the course the students should have enough skills to computerize statistical data, do relevant data analysis and report the findings.
- At least one statistical analysis software (like SPSS) will be used in this course.
- There will be about 5 class hours per week and 60 class hours for the total course that consists of lecture as well as lab/workshop sessions.
PUBLIC HEALTH TECHNOLOGIES (2 CREDITS)
Objectives
- Understand basics of public health technologies like public health informatics, health information management systems (HIMS), use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in health, Telemedicine, community rehabilitation services etc
- Impress upon how appropriate use of technology brings forth faster and efficient solutions to many age-old issues in public health.
- Understand the socio-cultural implications of technology use in public health and basics of technology assessment at the community level.