This course introduces the vision, values and community-centered ethos of 21st century developing country public health needs, and are introduced to a holistic model of health, with personal health as a critical dimension of public health and its complementarity with social dimensions of health. There is intensive urban and rural public health context learning and groups of students work to find solutions to public health problems.

Brac Health Management Experiential Learning

The experiential learning exercise engages students to apply their Public Health vision, values, practices, community centered ethos to real world rural health programme management, Students will now leverage their accumulated community-health learnings to practically comprehend the service delivery and related management functions within BRAC Health’s Maternal, Neonatal, Child, Adolescent Health (MNCAH) programme.

In this course, students critically explore how elementary personal, gender, cultural and socio-economic perceptions influence contemporary developing world health environments. In particular, how indigenous and biomedical approaches to health and well-being promote or constrain community health outcomes. The course challenges conventional biomedical notions of health with more holistic conceptions which include emotional, mental and spiritual dimensions of health. The course takes on a solution centric approach whereby the sessions are designed around working with communities and the development of innovative small-scale solutions, which engage students in learning by doing.

This course is designed as an intensive, hands-on learning experience that will foster the development of basic skills in epidemiology. Students will build and refine methodological skills and epidemiological reasoning through a process of scientific inquiry into public health issues with the goal of developing problem-solving skills for improving the health of the global population.

This course is intended to provide the basic and intermediate foundations of biostatistics as applied to public health. The students will learn various statistical theories and how to apply those theories for public health problem-solving and inquiry. They will also learn how to use STATA to obtain statstcal output, interpret statistical output, and present it in scientific literature.

Students learn how to use and apply epidemiological, statistical and quantitative research tools on public health problems through practical case studies, both global, local, and critical analysis of data sets on real world health problems. Students visit the field for their learning.

This course provides students with diverse frameworks, global and local cases to to examine the complexities of pluralistic health systems. Community-centric approaches, leadership and management, programme management of facilities, policies, budgets, public health diplomacy and core management functions and health facilities operations are integrated into this module. Fieldwork is dedicated to learning from different health facilities. Students problem-solve and work on innovative simple solutions to improve MNCH service delivery.

Students are exposed to concepts on health economics and healthcare financing, and as part of the contextual learning, evaluate the impact of health insurance schemes on disadvantaged communities. Using a community centered and pro-equity approach, students produce an innovative solution-model on insurance package options for the poorest.

This course provides students with the ability to understand key concepts and professional skills to monitor and evaluate a public health problem. Core components covered are monitoring and evaluation, indicators, design, data collection and analysis and how integrating real time information into programme implementation. Students visit and review selected programmes and visit sites run by BRAC.

Introduction to Implementation Research Module orients the learners to the concept of Implementation Research (IR) and its use in understanding and addressing barriers to effective and quality delivery of health interventions. Strategies and policies in the Health Systems. In particular, this module offers an introductory understanding of the concepts, process, key practical issues and considerations related to designing and implementing an implementation research. Applied skills related to planning and implementing an implementation research are developed through case based interactive group exercise and discussion.

Students are oriented to numerous important viral and bacterial diseases, disease, distribution, surveillance and control strategies prevalent in developing countries. Through experiential hands-on learning, students undertake field visits to icddr,b’s famous Matlab surveillance area and BRAC’s globally recognized DOTS Tuberculosis & Malaria Control programme, to learn implementation of epidemiological studies on infectious diseases.

Key concepts in public health and communications, marketing theories and its practical application in the health sector is taught in this course. Public health communications practitioners working in development agencies are interviewed to understand key lessons and challenges in a changing digital technology and social media world.

Students learn global and local anthropological and epidemiological theories, concepts and evidence on how social, politcal and economic factors impact gender, sexual and reproductve health and sexuality and rights. For the MNCH component, students visit a hospital and investigate particular bottlenecks and develop solutions.

Programme Management Learning

Students aim at understanding Respectful Maternity Care Practice (ANC service and environment of Labor Ward at Upazila Health Complex (UHC) and design a pilot project for a solution on a focused component to improve RMC practice at UHC level

This course introduces global and local contexts of child and maternal nutrition and the prevention and management of nutrition in public health programmes. Fieldwork provides an opportunity for students to utilize their basic research skills and reflect on programme successes and challenges of managing malnutrition by interviewing patents and service providers at icddr,b hospital facilities.

Concepts on non-communicable diseases, aging populations, and implications of aging populations for developing countries and service delivery needs are taught in this course. Students visit and interview aged care service providers working in NGOs, Government of Bangladesh and the private sector.

This course familiarizes the students to the nexus between environment and health, and emerging challenges of climate change and disaster management for vulnerable populations. Case studies and field exposure directly relevant to developing country contexts are covered. Field visits are made to urban industrial catchment and riverbank areas to understand community needs and interventions required.

As the culminating learning project, groups of students work on a public health area, undertaking primary research on or evaluation of a programme, to understand key public health problems and find solutions.