Postgraduate Applied Health 2019-2020

Course Aims:

The course aims to enable you to develop a broad knowledge, understanding, and application of the scientific basis of human nutrition.

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the course, you should be able to:

1. Summarise the underlying physiology related to human nutrition.
2. Explain the key concepts of nutrient and energy metabolism.
3. Distinguish between the metabolism of different macronutrients.
4. Outline the role of micronutrients and non-nutritive dietary components in human nutrition.
5. Assess the interactions between nutrients as part of a whole diet.
6. Prepare, process, interpret, and present topics in human nutrition using formal presentation.

This course in Applied Statistics intends to focus on the application of statistical techniques in postgraduate research for health professionals, with a particular emphasis on the correct interpretation of statistical analyses. The course will NOT concentrate on the statistical theory underlying the subject. An important component of the course is the use of a statistical package. The statistical package used on this course will be IBM SPSS Statistics 25 which can be used to implement all of the methods taught on this course. 

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. In addition, it will also provide insight into the effects of malnutrition and food processing on health. A combination of lectures, and a laboratory class will help consolidate your understanding of the impact food and nutrients on health.

Unhealthy and risky behaviours – such as a poor diet, sedentary behaviour, not attending screening programmes, or not taking medication as prescribed – are leading causes of suboptimal health and premature death, health care expenditure, and sickness absence. Health Psychology examines what drives these behaviours and how they can be changed. This course aims to provide students with the core knowledge and skills for developing and implementing effective interventions to promote healthier 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. The structure of the course reflects the logical flow of the research process itself, moving week on week from the planning of research (generating and refining research questions, evaluating evidence, designing a study), through study conduct (ethical practice, qualitative and quantitative methods, measurement issues, research governance) to the interpretation and dissemination of results (to academic, policy, public, and media audiences).

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 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 this course is to provide an introduction to the application of economics to health care. Resources available for the provision and payment for health care are limited. However, knowledge of economics helps ensure that available resources are used in the most effective way possible. Economics allows more informed decision making about a variety of issues: choosing between alternative treatments; setting priorities between patients; choosing between alternative new technologies; organising the provision of health care.

Research methods and Professional Practice 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. 

What can health professionals and health care promoters do to improve their own and others health and wellbeing? What influences people’s health behaviours? Why do people find it difficult to change their health behaviour? What are the most promising strategies for improving health and well-being?

Health behaviours cover a wide range of behaviours (e.g. smoking, physical activity, vaccination, diet, taking medication, and practicing safe sex) and have a major impact on peoples’ health, quality of life, and (healthy) life expectancy. Nevertheless, many people have an unhealthy diet, exercise too little, don’t take their medication as prescribed, smoke, drink excessive amounts of alcohol, and so forth.

In this course, we will address these challenges and students will learn key theories about health behaviour and behaviour change, including behaviour change techniques, in order to understand how health behaviours can be influenced by a variety of factors within an individual (e.g., conscious and unconscious thoughts, emotions, goals, and decisions), and also by factors in the environment (e.g., the behaviours and expectations of society; the quality of the communication by health care professionals; or availability and affordability of healthy options in the environment).

 Health psychologists and health professionals are expected to be able to develop, evaluate and implement intervention programs to promote healthier behaviour, through changing individuals and their environment.

Within this course you will develop your understanding of health behaviours, what influences them and how to change them. You will experience the role of health behaviours from both the participant’s and researcher view, by developing, participating in and analysing your own behavioural intervention.

This course builds on the learning from the Introduction to Global health course in the first half session. It focusses on the issues that affect the health of all nations of the world, the problems that unite developing and developed countries – the shared risks and vulnerabilities. This is not merely the study of emerging diseases and epidemic threats such as HIV, Ebola and Zika but also the dual burden of over and undernutrition, communicable and non-communicable diseases, the impact of war, conflict and climate change on the health of individuals, nations and world populations.

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, and trains students in key professional practice skills such as cognitive-behavioural therapy, motivational interviewing and health coaching.

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.

Public health is the art and science of improving health through the organised efforts of society. This course supports students in developing a critical understanding of the breadth of public health approaches to protecting, promoting, monitoring and improving health among the population as a whole.

The course is core to the MPH programme, but also open to students interested in understanding the population-based approach to health. All must be registered for the course and complete all assessments. The course is suitable for students wanting a professional (specialist/ practitioner) public health career and also for those wanting a related academic career.

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 specialism course provides an up-to-date knowledge of Public Health Nutrition and provides students with an opportunity to develop their understanding of the social, economic and cultural determinants of nutrition-related health problems, and skills that will enable them to design, implement and evaluate nutrition policies and programmes aimed at addressing such problems. A combination of lectures, seminars, debates, tutorials and site visits will give insight into key aspects of public health nutrition and you will be expected to contribute to lively discussions of the topics.

Clinical nutrition is the study of diet in relation to the development and treatment of human disease. This specialism course provides an up-to-date and detailed knowledge on the role of nutrition in the aetiology, prevention and treatment of disease in humans, with particular emphasis on disease prevention. The course covers key topics surrounding nutrition and disease, and how clinical nutrition links with public health and molecular nutrition. The course also provides an overview of research tools widely used in clinical nutrition research, and a training on evidence-based analysis of nutrition case studies.

This course will give you a detailed theoretical and practical understanding of the methods used to assess nutritional status, including dietary intake, assessment of body composition and energy expenditure applied in the context of energy balance. 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. 

This work-based placement elective offers a professional placement with a government/public, civic or voluntary health and/or development sector organisation. You will undertake a ten-week placement with your host organisation, either within the organisation, remotely from Aberdeen, or using a combination of both. Placements are subject to availability and are offered on a competitive basis.

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.

This applied research project, completed under the guidance of two supervisors, 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 nutrition 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.

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