Section outline

  • Note: if you want to gain a certificate for completing this course, you will have to create an account and log in as a student.

    Background

    The course builds on another course in this series 'Public Health - the basics', to provide examples of the practice of Public Health in understanding the burden, causes and interventions to control diseases, and how to evaluate Public Health interventions. The first section identifies the burden of illness, disease causation and the evidence base and policy options for interventions to reduce the population burden of illness. Crucial in the development of effective interventions is their evaluation - hence the second section of this course.

    We hope that after going through this resource, you will be able to:

    • Understand the burden of illness, the causes and how to develop evidence based interventions for some of the major diseases affecting populations in low-income settings

    • Become familiar with some key concepts of how to evaluate interventions

    • Reflect on how you might apply these learnings to your own setting

    Scope of the course

    There are two sections:

    • Patterns and major categories of disease
    • Evaluating interventions

    How to navigate the course

    Each section comprises some introductory remarks. To access resources we think you will find interesting - click on the hyperlinks and on the collections of resources. There is a forum in each section for reflection and a quiz at the end to check your understanding of some of the concepts.

    We encourage you to reflect on what you have learned or comment on the course. When you click on the hyperlink in each section labelled reflection, you will be able to add a new topic or respond to a previous one. You may want to share your learning from this and other readings, comment on the topics from your own experience, comment on others' posts, or provide feedback on how we can improve the content and presentation.


    In the final section you will see that you are eligible for a certificate - the requirements for this are to access the resources, post to the reflection forums in each section and pass the quiz. This is a self-directed course, to be taken at your own pace.

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    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.