Mountains of the Moon University School of Nursing and Midwifery

Introduction

In many African Universities training in Public Health is mainly at postgraduate level. This renders it difficult to produce enough Public Health professionals for public health services. Yet it is a very well known fact that no country can perform better than its educational system.

In Uganda there is high disease burden attributed to the high prevalence of preventable diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and malnutrition. The situation has been compounded by the newly emerging lifestyle diseases (especially hypertension and diabetes).

Though the National Health Policy emphasizes the importance of health promotion and disease prevention, there are an inadequate number of professionals available with relevant public health knowledge and skills to address these challenges. This situation in many regions of Uganda is not very different in most Tropical African countries. Mountains of the Moon University has thus come in to contribute to the bridging of this gap by offering graduate and undergraduate programmes in Public Health. The School of Health Sciences is focused on producing outstanding Public Health Professionals who meet National and international standards for the modern job market.

Mission statement

To offer high quality and demand driven academic programmes addressing local and international public health challenges thereby contributing to the health and wellbeing of the people of Uganda and the international community.

Academic programmes

Since 2005, the school has been offering a 3 years Bachelor of Science degree in Public Health on full-time basis and distance learning. However, starting academic year 2012/13, a Master of Public Health (MPH) (distance), Bachelor of Science and Diploma in Nursing have been introduced. The curricula for the new programmes have already been approved by the University Senate and the National Council for Higher education.

The 3 years BSc Public Health degree programme has to-date trained a total of 254 students studying either on evening or distance. Of these about 20% are international students mainly from Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, South Sudan and Nigeria. The student enrolment has been increasing every year and with the plans to introduce day and weekend programmes alongside the current distance and evening programmes, we are expecting the total number of students to go up considerably in the following years

COURSES OFFERED

KEY TO LETTERS

D= Day       W= Weekend      E= Evening       Dist. = Distance
NOTE: Post-Graduate courses are under Directorate of Graduate Studies and Research

Community service

MMU is actively involved in community service though community diagnostic studies in which every year MMU public health students engage in a participatory meticulous process to identify community health relate problems and solutions which are then shared with development partners in the Rwenzori region including Local Government authorities, NGOs and private sector for action. Through these interactions, MMU public health students have themselves become agents of change the region. Our target are all the Districts in the Rwenzori region but so far 6 studies have been completed mainly in Kabarole District covering the sub-counties of: Rwimi, Kibiito, Bukuuku, Ruteete and Busoro in Kabarole Disrict; and recently Katooke Subcounty in Kyenjojo District. Still in Kyenjojo District, plans are in advanced stages to start various academic programmes at Kijwiga study centre. Not only does this bring immediate benefits to the community, it also builds strong community ties with MMU.

Research and Publications

The school of Health Sciences has a research agenda whose goal is to support the search for evidence needed to inform and guide public health decisions and actions locally, nationally and internationally. Developing the research agenda was prompted by the desire to have a well focused research programme drawn from the University’s strategic plan, regional development agenda, National and Global Public health priorities. The school has been engaged in applied health research addressing a wide range of public health problems in locally and internationally (details in our Research Repository at MMU School of Health Sciences). In addition, the school has partnered with a number of research institutions that have similar research interests.

MMU-KRC research collaboration

MMU School of Health Sciences in collaboration with Kabarole Research and Resource Centre (KRC) are mandated to spearhead a regional research agenda for the Rwenzori Think Tank Platform. The School of Health Sciences has been instrumental in the establishment of a regional research agenda addressing the current and emerging health challenges in the Ruwenzori region of western Uganda. The exercise is still on going but hope to be finalised by end of 2012.

MMU-University of Alberta research collaboration

The School of Health Sciences at MMU has been working in collaboration with University of Alberta and KRC to develop a robust research programme with priority health researches addressing real community problems in the Ruwenzori region of western Uganda. Under this collaboration, the school is involved in a Research project entitled “Transferring a community-based HIV treatment programme in Uganda to local stakeholders”. The research that will evaluate a community model using village health teams (VHTs) as community volunteers to deliver ARVs to HIV patients in Rwimi Subcounty, Kabarole District will be launched this year

MMU-University College Cork (UCC), Ireland collaboration

MMU Department of Public Health and the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland have been working together since 2008 with the overall aim of strengthening global public health practice by developing skilled and knowledgeable professionals in Ireland, Uganda and other African countries. We are in final stages of research project to establish baseline data on the burden of non-communicable diseases and risk factors in the Rwenzori region of Western Ugandan