Health and Sustainable Development
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GD204-30GD209-15 Term 1GD212-15 Term 2 |
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Module Leaders |
| Dr Ed Loveman & Dr Camilla Audia |
Optional Core - Second year only |
Either Terms 1 or 2 or Terms 1 and 2 |
30 CATS or 15 CATS |
30 workshop hours and 20 lecture hours
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Not available to students outside the School for Cross-Faculty Studies. |
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All lectures and seminars will be face to face unless otherwise stated in Moodle |
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For session preparation and further info, visit the module Moodle space via this link |
This module offers an in-depth examination of the field of global health and wellbeing from a governance and transdisciplinary perspective, exploring conceptual frameworks, representations, and pathways to change. Students will engage critically with wellbeing (physical, mental, community, and environmental), governance structures, health frameworks beyond the medical model (including co-production, transdisciplinarity, representation in arts and media, and decolonisation) and analyse Sustainable Development Goal 3 ("good health and well-being"). The two-term module involves a blend of conceptual foundations, case study analysis, and active learning through critical analysis, co-production principles, engagement with different media, and seminar group work. Throughout the module, students will explore case studies from across the globe, covering low-, middle-, and high-income and resource contexts, with an emphasis on understanding health through interdisciplinary lenses and using diverse sources of evidence and knowledge.
Principal Aims
The module is offered each of terms 1 and 2 (as a 15 CATS module) and as a 30 CATS module available across terms 1 and 2.
Term 1 introduces concepts of health and wellbeing beyond medical definitions and equips students with a big-picture understanding of global health governance, funding flows, and the evolution of health priorities. It examines physical and mental health, introduces wellbeing frameworks, and explores environmental and community dimensions of health. These core concepts are illustrated with case studies from across the world, including current research. Students will be pushed to grasp and discuss key issues that dominate global health using cross-disciplinary and wellbeing-focused frameworks through readings, lectures, and active engagement in the seminars. They will be pushed to critically think about their relationship to GSD in its global and local dimensions.
Term 2 focuses on critiques, frameworks, and co-production approaches that shape and impact global health and wellbeing. This includes transdisciplinary methods, decolonising health, Indigenous knowledges, and representations of health in popular media (film, television, videogames). Students will learn frameworks for interpreting, addressing, and initiating change as active players in global health, exploring upcoming issues and tools to understand and become change-makers. This term emphasises behaviour and resistance, ethics, multiplicity of knowledge systems, and creative, arts-based approaches as potential ways forward in global health.
Principal Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module, students will be able to:
- Appreciate economic, social, environmental, and governance dimensions of global health and wellbeing issues
- Understand and evaluate unintended outcomes of health interventions and policies
- Develop balanced and theoretically grounded arguments on the potential and limitations of technical solutions for health problems
- Critically analyse the ways in which changing contexts affect people's health and wellbeing
- Apply interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary frameworks to global health
- Engage with co-production principles and decolonising approaches to health research and practice
- Critically analyse representations of health in media and their role in shaping public perception
- Acquire theoretical and practical tools to become an active change-maker in the field of global health and wellbeing
Subject-specific Skills
Ability to:
- Critically assess and analyse global health and wellbeing issues that need to be addressed, including real-life examples
- Use and apply established frameworks and methodologies for analysing health governance, funding flows, and wellbeing determinants
- Generate and evaluate different models of health and wellbeing (beyond medical models) to assess their likely impact
- Engage with real-life problems relevant to sustainable development, health, and wellbeing
- Use historical knowledge and an understanding of the consequences of past actions to envision how futures may be shaped
- Identify the importance of empowering individuals and organisations to work together through co-production to create new knowledge
- Employ transdisciplinary and creative approaches to challenging assumptions and negotiating alternatives to unsustainable current practices
- Analyse representations of health in arts and media and their implications for global health discourse
Transferable skills
Intellectual skills: Students will possess the knowledge and vocabulary to converse about theories and methods for approaching global health and wellbeing issues from different governance, social, environmental, cultural, and historical perspectives; they will be able to critically interrogate statements about global health as part of sustainable development; understand how global health and wellbeing differ in policy and practice, what they may look like locally, and interpret potential implications.
Practical skills: Students will develop written and visual communication skills, including how to write a research paper or proposal and create visual mapping exercises; teamwork skills in co-production workshops and group activities; content analysis skills in critically reading, listening to, watching, and interpreting various materials including film, television, and video games.
Employability Skills: Students will refine project management skills in developing ideas on how to assimilate different readings and assignments into original, informed discussion on the topic; research skills in using databases, wider readings, and visuals to inform research for case studies, mapping exercises, and paper writing; oral, written, and visual communications; skills in designing arts-based and creative research projects.
Syllabus
Syllabus
Term 1 — What are global health and wellbeing?
Following an introduction to health in a non-medical Global Sustainable Development context, we will explore what health means to different communities and the global and local governance (or absence thereof) of health. We will examine historical trajectories that define current governance arrangements and critique flows of funding related to drugs, disease campaigns, and corporations. From there, we will study physical and mental health topics including contemporary therapeutic trends (e.g., Ozempic), stigma, and service provision across the globe, going beyond the North/South divide. The final block introduces wellbeing frameworks, planetary determinants of health (environmental health), and community wellbeing, culminating in an introduction to co-production that leads into Term 2.
Term 2 — Critique, fFrameworks & co-production
The introductory block will outline cross-cutting critique and analytical frameworks for challenging current global health practice, including behavioural frameworks, decolonising health, and transdisciplinary approaches. We will then focus on co-production principles and practice to challenge classic hierarchies in health knowledges. The second block explores Indigenous knowledges, traditional health systems, and innovations from the Global South and in low resource settings. The final block examines representations of health in popular media (movies, TV shows, video games), analysing what these representations reveal about public perception, different knowledge systems, and preparedness for health crises.
GD204 Assessment for 30 CAT Module
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60% Mapping exercise (produce a visual map + minimum 500‑word narrative explaining connections and interdisciplinary/global implications) 40% Research Paper (could also be a creative submission) |
GD209 Assessment for 15 CAT Module Term 1
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60% Mapping exercise (produce a visual map + minimum 500‑word narrative explaining connections and interdisciplinary/global implications) 40% Portfolio of reflections (critically discuss and answer questions explained and discussed in lectures) |
GD212 Assessment for 15 CAT Module Term 2
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60% Mapping exercise (produce a visual map + minimum 500‑word narrative explaining connections and interdisciplinary/global implications) 40% Portfolio of reflections (critically discuss and answer questions explained and discussed in lectures) |
Please note: Module availability and staffing may change year on year depending on availability and other operational factors. The School for Cross-faculty Studies makes no guarantee that any modules will be offered in a particular year, or that they will necessarily be taught by the staff listed on this page.