Postgraduate Applied Health 2015-2016

Health Services Research is a multidisciplinary field, which is broadly involved with the scientific evaluation of provision and delivery of health care services and their effects on people’s health. The aim of the course is to equip students with the skills and information needed to appraise and undertake health services research. Students will acquire the understanding, skills and information needed to: formulate a general aim and specific objectives; design a study; understand and apply the principles of critical appraisal in the context of other relevant research. 

This course in applied epidemiology gives an introduction to disease measurement at a population level, basic epidemiological study design and analysis, and provides an understanding of key methodological issues needed to apply when designing – or critically appraising – an epidemiological study.

The aim of the course is to introduce students to the application of economic thinking to the analysis of health policy and health systems. Specifically, we will survey the organisation, financing and delivery of health services, the economic evaluation of alternative ways of providing health care, economics of health behaviours and behavioural economics.  The material to be covered combines the conceptual and the theoretical with practical applications of health economic thinking. Sessions will be largely interactive involving brief lectures, group work, open class discussion and occasional seminars from ‘visitors’ who will bring a variety of practical experiences to the classroom.  

This course provides students with the under pinning knowledge required when studying human nutrition. Introducing the basic concepts of the biochemical and metabolic processes essential to human health, you will have lectures, tutorials and practical assignments on the metabolic and endocrinology pathway and immune system responses to the food and nutrients we eat.  During the course you will gain a detailed understanding of the digestion, absorption and metabolism of carbohydrates, protein, fat, alcohol, vitamins and minerals, as well as an in-depth knowledge of energy balance and metabolism.

This course will give you a detailed theoretical and practical understanding of the methods used to assess nutritional status, dietary intake and the nutritional composition of food. Theory will be put into practice through a series of practical workshop and laboratory sessions to give you ‘hands-on’ experience of using a range of assessment techniques using state-of-the-art equipment routinely employed by nutritional scientists. The assignments for this course are designed to help you develop the skills you will employ in daily life as a nutritional scientist these include presenting an academic poster, producing a paper and reporting on a case-study. 

This course intends to develop the student's awareness of the fact that statistical techniques are integral to scientific research. Researchers must be able to specify a precise research question in statistical terms and then select an appropriate study design in order to carry out an effective research project. They must also be able to assess the adequacy of the research presented in scientific or medical literature.

This course equips the student with knowledge of statistical principles and statistical methods. In addition, the student will gain experience of analysing, presenting and interpreting numerical information.

This course will equip students with the relevant skills to interpret and conduct systematic reviews on the effectiveness of healthcare interventions.

Students will learn to formulate a clear research question and understand the principles and main steps for undertaking systematic reviews. In particular, they will learn how:

i)              to develop an adequate search strategy;

ii)             to critically appraise primary studies;

iii)           to extract data from primary studies;

iv)           to identify the main sources of heterogeneity among primary studies;

v)            to analyse findings from primary studies;

vi)           to interpret results;

vii)         to assess the quality of existing systematic reviews.

This course provides a sound introduction to qualitative health research. You will consider the relevance and value of qualitative methodologies which respond to current  health agendas. The course introduces planning to conduct relevant research and a range of  methods to generate, handle and analyse qualitative data. You will gain insight into issues of  rigour, quality and ethics, and understand the importance of  engaging with relevant audiences.  The course is delivered by a range of experienced contributors, and you will gain insight into the practicalities of undertaking qualitative research via practical workshops and stimulating seminar discussions.

This course will provide a detailed knowledge of the relationships between diet, human development, health, and disease. Topics covered include diet and nutrition across the life course, integration and adaptability of different metabolic pathways to e.g. starvation, exercise, and the role of diet in the development of diseases including cancer and cardiovascular disease. During the course you will also develop the skills required to select and critically appraise scientific literature and to design research study protocols. A combination of lectures, laboratory classes and group presentations will help consolidate your understanding of the impact food and nutrients on health.

This course aims to provide students with an understanding of how behaviours (e.g. smoking, diet, medication adherence, etc) can protect, promote, risk or damage health; the key drivers of (un)healthy behaviours; and techniques to change health behaviours.

This course teaches students in the field of health psychology how to conduct high quality behavioural research, how to become an informed consumer of research, and how to think and operate within a professional, ethical framework.

This course provides students with skills for career development and an introduction to the field of global health.  Career development topics include strategic planning, skills analysis, self-awareness, goal setting and professionalism in the workplace. For global health, we hold a series of ‘film club’ seminars using online, digital and social media to study content from leading global health advocates, practitioners and scholars. Discussion themes are developed in class debate and group work. At the end of the course, students who take the second stage elective PU5521: Work Based Placements also apply for advertised placement opportunities. 

Epidemiology will allow students to develop a critical understanding of the strengths and limitations of an epidemiological approach to studying health and disease in a population. The course covers aspects of study design, measures of disease occurrence, causality, bias, confounding, odds ratios and relative risks as well as validity & reliability.

Fundamentals of research design provides the student with skills in both quantitative and qualitative design enabling the student to plan ethical research in a health context. Students are taken through each step - from formulating the research question, to study design, sample selection, methods for data collection and analyses to dissemination of results. Peer review of each step is an essential part of the feedback provided and students are required to present their proposed research during an online conference at the end of the course. 

The Introduction to online learning course gives students the opportunity to ensure they are comfortable and familiar with the use of the various online tools used during the courses in the online PgCert in Research Methods for Health. These include listening to podcasts, taking online quizzes, uploading electronic assignments, contributing to synchronous or ‘live’ discussions in our virtual classroom and asynchronous discussions using discussion boards, wikis and blogs as well as activating links to relevant and current websites, e-books/journal articles. Students are required to have a headset with a microphone function for this course

This course aims to provide students with (a) an opportunity to complete a thorough and comprehensive review of the existing literature on a clearly defined topic in an area of interest to Health Psychology, and (b) the academic skills to search, synthesise and clearly present in writing a large amount of research evidence.

Working largely independently with the support of an academic supervisor, students on this course will produce a substantial literature review of a publishable standard. Reviews may be either narrative or systematic depending on the topic area.

This module covers issues involved in identifying, measuring and valuing costs and benefits. Consideration will be given to the importance of health outcomes, non-health outcomes and process attributes when valuing the benefits of health care interventions. The student will be introduced to Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) and the use of standard gamble and time-trade off to estimate quality weights within the QALY framework. Consideration will be given here to the creation and use of generic QALY measures such as EuroQol; as well as specific QALY measures.

This course will use examples from the literature to demonstrate the actual application of economic evaluation in practice. Consideration will be given to methodological aspects of economic evaluation based on the analysis of patient level data alongside randomised controlled trials, and decision modelling exercises informed by systematic reviews. Policy applications of economic evaluation (including the use of economic evidence by NICE) will also be reviewed.

This specialism course provides an up-to-date knowledge of Public Health Nutrition research methods, a sound understanding of their application in diet, health and disease research, and their role in the development and evaluation of nutrition policies. A combination of lectures, seminars, debates and site visits will give insight into the practicalities of undertaking research and you will be expected to contribute to lively discussions of the research topics and intervention design. You will also learn to evaluate current sources of evidence to identify and critically appraise the relationship between food and nutrition the wider society and policy development. 

We live in an increasingly globalised world where information is shared more widely than ever before. To what extent can we trust the available data? How can we determine their integrity, plausibility and validity, particularly when decisions need to be made on available evidence? This course provides students with knowledge and understanding of global health and the skills to critically appraise the debates. With sessions from leading professionals and practitioners, students learn about established and emerging topics in global health, how these intersect with broader social, economic and political factors, and how research can make credible contributions in this context.

This course will provide students with knowledge and understanding of the main theoretical and empirical methods in health economics to value healthcare interventions and conduct economic evaluations. Specifically you will acquire an understanding of decision modelling for economic evaluation of health care technologies (medical treatments, diagnosis tests, screening strategies) and the economic methods of Contingent Valuation and Choice –based approaches (Discrete Choice Experiments –DCEs-, best/worst scaling) to value health care interventions (outcomes and processes).

This course will provide you with a ‘hands on’ experience in conducting an extensive individual research project for six months, in a Public Health context.  This project will address a particular Public Health issue and is designed to develop your core competence in identifying and handling research questions and their answers by the methods of enquiry and analysis relevant to the full range of health services and public health activities.

This course provides up-to-date knowledge of the biological and molecular science research methods relevant to understanding the role food and nutrients in health and disease. A combination of lectures, seminars, laboratory classes, clinical sessions and site visits will help you integrate the practicalities of undertaking nutrition research with the biological processes involving nutrition and its roles in both clinical and public health nutrition. During this course you will be required contribute to lively discussions of the application of the research methods, study and intervention design.

This course aims to explore the psychological side of illness and disability and learn how Health outcomes (e.g. quality of life, death, disease) depend to a large extent on people’s beliefs, perceptions, decisions and actions.  Over the course, students will learn how these factors can change how symptoms are interpreted and reported, how risk is perceived, how illness and disability are experienced, whether help is sought from medical professionals, and whether recommended treatments are adhered to over time.  Students will also study contemporary models of disability and explore how disability behaviour influences health outcomes.

This course examines how the behaviour of health professionals can impact on patient care and service delivery, for example through doctor-patient communication, healthcare professional stress, medical decision making, and staff adherence to safety procedures. Students on this course spend two days shadowing health professionals in the NHS and are trained in key professional practice skills such as cognitive-behavioural therapy, motivational interviewing and health coaching

The aim of this course is to develop an understanding of public health and how research skills can be applied in practice. Students will develop a critical awareness of the 3 domains of public health: health protection, health promotion and health service improvement. Topics covered by the course include: Health Care Needs and Services; Health Protection and Environmental Health; Health Improvement; Health Screening; Health Psychology; Health Economics; Organisation and Management of Healthcare; Policy and Strategy

This course offers students professional placements with public, civic, voluntary, development sector organisations and government agencies. The placements are subject to availability and offered on a competitive basis. The course enhances students’ employability through engagement in a competitive application process; by applying academic skills in work-based environments; by developing communication and networking skills; through acquiring knowledge and understanding of health-related organisations; and by preparing and delivering a workplace report appropriate to the host organisation’s style. Students gain a unique practical experience, a ‘real-world’ practical relevance to their work, a range of transferrable skills, professional connections and a stand-out CV.

Applied statistics introduces students to statistical concepts involved in the appropriate design, analysis and interpretation of research in health settings, covering aspects of data types and presentation of data; probability; samples, distributions, statistical inference; hypothesis testing; univariate parametric and non-parametric methods and correlation with an introduction to regression.

Evidence-based health enables students to gain a fundamental understanding and application of evidence based health at an individual and population level. The course will follow the steps of protocol development for a systematic review including choosing a search strategy, critical appraisal, data extraction and synthesis/analysis. The course also looks at using evidence in guideline development and healthcare practice and how to maximise effective communication of research findings. 

This course explores how stress and personality can affect our health by influencing how we view the world, how we react to situations and events (psychologically, physiologically and behaviourally) and our capacity to cope in difficult circumstances.

We are all individuals who respond differently to the environment around us and these individual differences can influence our health, positively and negatively. Stress and other individual differences such as coping, social support and personality will be explored in relation to health and illness. Understanding the relationship between these factors can explain the psychological influences on health and identify key areas for intervention.

This module looks at different types of health care systems. The main aspects of this will be the modes of finance and provision, levels and allocation of expenditure and the implications of these for efficient and equitable use of health care resources. Building on material from Module 1 it will cover a range of issues relevant to many health care systems: the application of supply and demand theory; the complex relationships between the transactors in health care; the patient as consumer; user charges; supplier; incentives; reimbursement and competition. The material will draw on a range of experiences from the UK, continental Europe, North America and Australia.

The dissertation is an independent piece of work undertaken by students which allow them to demonstrate in depth the skills and knowledge acquired on the MSc, and their ability to apply these two issues relevant to health economics.

This course allows students to develop deepened knowledge into current research and methodological development in selected area(s) in a world-class research environment. Students develop capacities to independently and creatively identify and formulate research questions and operationalize objectives with appropriate methodologies and activities within timeframes.

This 18 week research project completed under the guidance of a supervisor will give direct experience of the different processes involved in scientific research either in a laboratory, clinical or public health setting. A wide range of research topics will be offered covering the subjects studied in the taught course. Projects are carried out at the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health, School of Medical and Dentistry or Aberdeen Royal Infirmary; projects may also be undertaken in other institutions in the UK or overseas where suitable supervision can be identified.

This course offers students the opportunity to complete a substantial piece of data-driven, empirical work within the field of Health Psychology, under the supervision of an experienced Health Psychology researcher.

Topics available will be varied but within the domain of Health Psychology. Students will identify a suitable topic area, develop a research protocol, design and implement an empirical study and write up the results in the format of a journal article.