MSc Health & Social Policy

This module focuses on understanding how policy can be made in 'co-produced' ways that engage with external stakeholders and unequal publics. This will include some contextual consideration of traditional methods of influencing policymaking, such as consultation, advocacy and lobbying, before progressing to examine more innovative and participatory ways in which stakeholders and members of the public, or particular communities, can be brought into decision-making in health policy and practice.

Explore the crucial ways in which social and health policies interact and the consequences that decisions about social policies have for health outcomes. This module uses intersectionality as a core social science concept.

The module uses the UK, which has particularly high health inequalities and a wide-range of useful data sources, as a core case study. We focus on three exemplar inequalities: health, place and criminal justice inequalities. However, for each exemplar inequality, we will also examine international examples and, where possible, adapt these examples to the geo-political interests and experiences of those taking the module.

We introduce core social policy concepts and ideas, such as human rights and equity, consider how these have shaped social policy scholarship, and how explore how they have been understood and applied in policy settings.

We look at the ontological and epistemological foundations of contrasting methodological paradigms, encouraging students to consider the assumptions that underpin widely used quantitative and qualitative methods. We also look at the challenges in bringing qualitative and quantitative data and analysis together. This module is particularly suited to students with interests in research design, evidence synthesis and critical analysis of research.

Explore how dietary influences on health have been perceived in the West during the 20th century. Nutrition has been and continues to be one of the most controversial areas of health and medicine and one of the goals of this module (based in History) is to examine why this has been the case.

Become familiar with a broad range of tools and techniques from across health analysis, policy, and management scholarship, applying these to real-world problems typical of policy settings. This module will particularly suit students interested in developing analytic skills in policy settings. It is based in the Strathclyde Business School and runs across Semester one and two.

This module offers an introduction to the concepts of sustainability and key frameworks around sustainable development. Students will explore, firstly, the history of the concept of sustainable development and the global challenges that it seeks to address. The UN SDGs framework and 2030 agenda will be presented and the SDG dashboard will be scrutinised to help them understand the type of evidence used to assess global progress against common objectives. Students will develop critical perspective to the concept but also practical skills on researching around sustainable development problems.

Examine the inherent conflicts in health journalism and heath communication. The goal of this class is to examine the potential and limits of the media to accomplish health education of the public. We will examine how both information and entertainment media present and frame various health behaviours and how that affects media consumers. We will look at how theories, models, and assumptions of mass communication relate to public health issues. Topics to be covered include scientific inquiry, the media vs. science, framing illness, body image, stigma, entertainment education, mythologizing doctors, and others.

This module considers pressing health policy challenges comparatively across a range of international health systems. Examples of key topics include debates around health care funding, and the tensions between calls to address acute healthcare concerns and pressure to do more to address commercial and social determinants of health. The module also considers how we can compare the performance of distinctive health systems, noting the limitations of some commonly-used indicators.

Students have the choice between:

• Quantitative Methods, which uses real-world examples to help bring the insights (and limitations) of quantitative research to life
• Qualitative Methods, which provided advanced training in documentary analysis, interviews and focus groups.

Both modules have a strong focus on research for policy purposes. Students seeking postgraduate methods training across quantitative and qualitative methods can also choose to take both modules.

The module explores welfare systems and policy developments across a range of countries, with an OECD focus. Gain a thorough comparative understanding of how and why different welfare systems have developed as they have and the consequences of this for key health and social outcomes. You will utilise comparative methods of inquiry to critically evaluate the performance of different welfare systems. This module is likely to appeal to students interested in learning from international comparisons.

Run by Strathclyde Business School, this module provides students with knowledge of:

• health systems financing
• medical markets and policy innovation
• public-private governance objectives and policy levers
• health system performance assessment and monitoring
• the role of public financial management
• health systems needs assessment.

It is likely to appeal to students who are keen to develop analytic policy careers in the health sector.

A Humanities-based module exploring the complex interactions between medicine, gender, health and illness in the 19th and 20th centuries. This is likely to appeal to students who are keen to think about interactions between social issues and health policies over a more historical time-frame.

Develop your own research project exploring an issue for which health and social policy intersect, with the support of an individual academic supervisor.

Lead a research project that will either:

• contribute to addressing a gap identified by one of our NGO or policy partners, or
• support a large-scale health policy research project led by Strathclyde academics

Placement-based dissertation opportunities will be competitively-allocated to students who choose this option, based on academic performance in semester one.