Health ProtectionModule Details

Module Description

This module focuses on the epidemiology of global public health, with emphasis on health protection: resilience and organisational response to communicable disease outbreaks and emergency preparedness in various settings, such as those where migrants and socio-economically disadvantaged groups reside. It also reflects on global health efforts and activities to help countries prepare for and develop capacities to address epidemic and pandemic diseases.

Module Aim

The module aims to provide students with an understanding of how public health approaches may protect individuals, groups and populations from non-infectious environmental hazards such as chemicals and radiation, contracting infectious disease, and emergency incidents and outbreaks. The module also aims to make students aware of issues associated with migrant / refugee health and issues around the implementation of vaccination programmes. 

Module Learning Outcomes

After completion of the module, students should be able to:
1.    Investigate public health protection in the event of chemical and radiation emergencies.
2.    Interpret and explain the characteristics of incubation period, transmission, and communicability of microbes and describe their relationship with the spread of emerging infectious diseases in the population, their determinants and response approaches. 
3.    Investigate epidemiological characteristics of selected major infectious diseases for public health (e.g. Covid-19, HIV, tuberculosis, influenza, diarrhoeal disease, malaria) in the developed and developing world, and describe measures of prevention and control transmission. 
4.    Describe the ‘epidemiological profile’ of migrants/refugees and the healthy immigrant effect and assess the myths prevailing regarding this specific issue in modern societies.