Health and Sustainable Development
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GD209-15 Term 1GD212-15 Term 2orGD204-30 |
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Module Leader |
| Dr Camilla Audia |
Optional Core - Second year only |
Either Terms 1 or 2 or Terms 1 and 2 |
15 or 30 CATS |
15 workshop hours and 10 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 |
| Please note this webpage refers to the module as planned for 2024/2025. |
This module offers an in-depth examination of the field of global health, including theories, case-studies from around the world and analysis of 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 role-play, engaging with different media and group work. Throughout the module, students will explore case studies from across the globe, covering low-, middle-, and high income contexts. Seminars will also emphasise the use of data to inform our understanding of global and local health problems.
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 the concept and dimensions of global health and equips students with a big-picture understanding of health governance and health systems. It focuses on theories, actors and interdisciplinary dimensions of global health and the changing priorities of the international development agenda within and beyond the Sustainable Development Goals. These core concepts are illustrated with case-studies from across the world, including state of the art, current research and the combination of readings, lectures and active engagement will further enable students to grasp and discuss key issues that dominate global health using cross-disciplinary frameworks, their relationship to international development and other sustainable development goals, and their global and local dimensions.
Term 2 will focus on cross-cutting issues that shape and impact on global health. This will include frameworks for interpreting, addressing and initiating change as active players in global health; unfinished and upcoming issues that will dominate debates and discourses in the coming years and tools to understand and become change-makers. This term still offers some key foundations of global health and development, focussing on inequalities and past and recent issues, then focusses on human behaviour and influences on global health; ethics; transdisciplinarity and multiplicity of knowledge systems 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 issues
- Understand and evaluate un-intended 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
- Apply interdisciplinary frameworks to global health
- Acquire theoretical and practical tools to become an active change-maker in the field of global health
Subject-specific Skills
Ability to:
- critically assess and analyse global health issues that need to be addressed, including real-life examples;
- use and apply established frameworks and methodologies for analysing the impact(s) of a process;
- generate and evaluate different models of health to assess their likely impact;
- engage with real-life problems relevant to sustainable development and health;
- 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 to create new knowledge;
- employ leadership for global health by challenging assumptions and negotiating alternatives to unsustainable current practices.
Transferable skills
Intellectual skills: students will possess the knowledge and vocabulary to converse about theories and methods for
approaching global health issues from different biomedical, social, political and historical perspectives; they will be
able to critically interrogate statements about global health as part of sustainable development; understand how global
health differs in policy and practice, what it may look like locally and interpret potential implications.
Practical skills: students will develop written communication skills, including how to write a research paper; teamwork
skills in the preparation of games and activities; content analysis skills in critically reading, listening to, watching and
interpreting various materials.
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-study, essay and paper writing; oral and written communications.
Syllabus
Term 1
Following an introduction to global health and development, we will explore the global and local governance (or absence thereof) of health, historical trajectories that define current governance arrangements and the structures of national health systems. From there, we will study specific topics of global health within the Sustainable Development Goal 3 and topics outside the SDGs that are key to the global health agendas. We will also look at the links between global health and environmental change and present recent case-studies from across Global North and Global South.
Term 2
The introductory week of this module will outline cross-cutting issues in health and sustainable development, and their analytical power in interrogating and challenging current global health practice. We will then focus on cross-cutting issues and frameworks including human behaviour, ethics, transdisciplinarity and multiplicity of knowledge systems as potential ways forward in global health.
Assessment for 30 CAT Module
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Term 1: 1 x 500 word Case study outline - 10% Term 1: 1 x 2000 word Case study analysis - 20% Term 2: 1 x 1500 word Reflective piece (in three weekly 500 word submissions) - 20% Term 2: 1 x 4000 word Research paper - 50% |
Assessment for 15 CAT Module Term 1
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1 x 2000 word Essay (50%) 1 x 500 word Case study outline (10%) 1 x 2000 word Case study analysis (40%) |
Assessment for 15 CAT Module Term 2
| Coursework |
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1 x 2000 word Essay (50%) 1 x 1500 word Reflective piece (50%) |
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.