IHSU Diploma in Bsc Public Health Course |International Health Sciences University

Overview

Strengthening the public health workforce to ensure it has sufficient capacity and capability is vital to improvements in health and well being for Uganda’s future. Public health has become increasingly important in the political agenda due to concerns about increasing levels of diseases that take lives unnecessarily. In addition to increasing lifestyle-related ill health (including obesity, heart diseases, diabetes, and blood pressure, chronic ill-health, and poor mental health), Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from diseases and illnesses that are closely related to poverty and lack of access to preventive health care. Poverty, HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, pollution, preventable diseases, and conflict are problems that we see all around us in the Great Lakes region today.

Aims and Objectives

This Bachelor’s degree programme is offered in Uganda at the undergraduate level in only one other tertiary institution. Given the need for training public health specialists, the Institute of Health Policy and Management offers this programme for those already working in the health sector who wish to specialise in public health and for school leavers who wish to enter this emerging and challenging field.

Throughout this course, students are introduced to a variety of subjects that provide the knowledge base and skills for understanding the social, economic, biological, and environmental dimensions of health and health improvement. Typical courses in the programme offer students a range of options to examine, including health promotion and public health; management; finance; gender; globalisation; clinical governance; data management, quality assurance, leadership, and epidemiology. The aim of this BSc programme is to provide students with a broad knowledge of the theories and methods of public health as well as skills in working with the health problems of the communities in which they work.

Outcomes

Increasingly it is recognized that to tackle these public health problems, health care workers require relevant public health skills and competences. Through this programme, students will be assisted to:

            – Evaluate and analyse the challenges confronting public health and the provision of health services today;

            – Engage in policy debate about global and international health; and

            – Respond to the challenge of the widening health inequalities that exist within and between communities and indeed countries.