Dr Justin Parkhurst COW.3.08

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Global Health. This course is not available as an outside option.

The course introduces to the social determinants of health, and how global health issues are reliant on, and addressed by, social policy concerns and interventions. Following this, the course is organized in sessions addressing the health effects of a range of broad social and structural determinants and areas of social policy (e.g. education; childcare and/or early childhood; labour and employment; poverty; inequality ; cash transfer programmes, etc.), along with example global health issues to explore the social and structural drivers of illness. The impact of social policies on health based on both country-specific and cross-national studies is critically assessed. The course further engages with the challenges of policymaking and forming policy responses to social and structural drivers of health, particularly at the global level.   Specific methodological approaches and challenges are also discussed based on both conceptual and empirical studies.

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the LT. 3 hours of help sessions in the ST.

Students will be expected to produce 1 piece of coursework in the LT.

Formative coursework: One non-assessed project report (2,000 words) in Week 5.  Students are expected to deliver a research plan for a proposed project. It is expected that it will have a comparative character, comparing regions, countries or other geographic units that are of policy relevance. The research project will follow one of two structures:

1. Consider the specific hypotheses and evidence that might support a particular social policy intervention to impact on health; OR
2. Choose a key health issue in a country or region and consider the available evidence that would support broad social policy intervention.

Students will briefly summarize key literature, and identify the gaps in knowledge, and propose a concrete research question that can be addressed empirically and that contributes to filling a gap in the literature. Finally, they will outline an approach to address the proposed question, and discuss the potential strengths and limitations of their approach. Students will receive feedback on this proposal, which will serve as basis for the development of the final project paper.

Rose, Geoffrey. 2001. "Sick individuals and sick populations."  International journal of epidemiology 30 (3):427-432.

Kelly, Michael P, and Emma Doohan. 2012. "The social determinants of health." In Global health: diseases, programs, systems and policies, edited by Michael H. Merson, Robert E. Black and Anne J. Mills, 75-113. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Berkman, Lisa F, Ichiro Kawachi, and M Maria Glymour. 2014. Social epidemiology: Oxford University Press.

CSDH. 2008. Closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health: final report of the commission on social determinants of health. Geneva: World Health Organization.

Frenk, Julio, and Suerie Moon. 2013. "Governance challenges in global health."  New England Journal of Medicine 368 (10):936-942.

Parkhurst, Justin O. 2014. "Structural approaches for prevention of sexually transmitted HIV in general populations: definitions and an operational approach."  Journal of the International AIDS Society 17 (1).

Exam (75%, duration: 2 hours) in the main exam period.
Project (25%, 3000 words) in the LT.