The unit aims: To develop critical understanding of the concepts of disease incidence, prevalence, and risk, and how they are assessed. To develop critical understanding of the main issues in the design of epidemiological studies and to critically assess the suitability of each type of study design (cohort design, case-control design and intervention). To develop critical appreciation of key issues in the analysis and interpretation of epidemiological results and to critically assess the effects of bias and confounding as well as the distinction between association and causation.

The unit aims:

To develop critical understanding of the concepts of disease incidence, prevalence, and risk, and how they are assessed.

To develop critical understanding of the main issues in the design of epidemiological studies and to critically assess the suitability of each type of study design (cohort design, case-control design and intervention)

To develop critical appreciation of key issues in the analysis and interpretation of epidemiological results and to critically assess the effects of bias and confounding as well as the distinction between association and causation.

The unit aims are:
To foster a critical understanding and appreciation of what healthcare commissioning means and its importance to UK and international public health.
To develop a critical understanding and appreciation of the key the oretical concepts related to healthcare commissioning.
To develop a critical understanding and appreciation of the key practical concepts related to healthcare commissioning.

The Unit will discuss a number of fundamental ethical and legal issues in health care. Many of them remain contentious and continue to be the focus of intense public debate, such as the justification of behavior modification to combat obesity or the legal right to assisted suicide. The Unit will not provide answers to the many ethical and legal problems in health care that will be discussed. Rather, the Unit aims to equip you with the knowledge and skills to recognize when ethical and legal issues arise in healthcare and how best to approach them.

The aim of this unit is to establish a context for study in the field of public health intelligence through an analysis of current principles and approaches to issues of health care development and research. This unit enables students (and practitioners) with the opportunity to become confident users of public health evidence, being able to develop the necessary knowledge, skills and analytical abilities to carryout rigorous collection, evaluation and analysis of public health data, and to integrate the resulting evidence with that derived from other sources, in order to answer public health questions and contribute to policy-making and decision-making that ultimately bring change in public health practice.