Our teaching

The Health Promotion and Public Health Program (HPPHP) is a suite of five undergraduate and three postgraduate Public Health and Health Promotion courses taught and coordinated by the CPRC in the School of Public Health. This distinctive, coherent suite of courses guides students through an iterative process of developing core skills and knowledge tailored to the contemporary demands of the Public Health workforce. The success of the HPPHP is grounded in a team teaching approach, with its four-member team regularly peer reviewing their teaching as well as systematically applying student feedback to improve Program learning outcomes. While the HPPHP cohort is a diverse one, students are supported in their learning and, importantly, understand how frameworks and principles taught across the Program intersect and connect.

The HPPHP team serve and influence the broader School and their disciplines through teaching and professional leadership roles and dissemination of their teaching practices, which means the HPPHP has far-reaching impact beyond that of the enhanced student experience.

CPRC’s HPPHP teaching team, consisting of Dr Brianna Fjeldsoe, Dr Sheleigh Lawler, Dr Tamzyn Davey and Mrs Genevieve Maher,

Recognition of teaching by peers
2015 Faculty Teaching Award for ‘Programs that Enhance Learning’.

Undergraduate

Understanding Health Behaviours (PUBH2004)
This course uses a behavioural epidemiology framework to understand behaviours that are linked with chronic diseases. This framework guides researchers to understand the relationships between health behaviours and health outcomes, to develop accurate measures of health behaviours and to identify factors that influence health behaviours at both an individual and population level. This course teaches students the concepts, methods and evidence for researching these key elements of the behavioural epidemiology framework. The knowledge gained from this course provides the necessary grounding for understanding how to bring about health behaviour changes. PUBH2004 does not deal with developing health behaviour interventions; as this is the subject of PUBH3005 Influencing Health Behaviours.
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Inﬂuencing Health Behaviours (PUBH3005)
This course teaches students about evidence-based health behaviour intervention programs, using the behavioural epidemiology framework. Key elements of the framework focused on in this course include understanding and influencing health behaviour change. This course equips students with the practical skills and applied knowledge required to deal with a range of health behaviour intervention programs and draws from multiple examples of real-world intervention programs.
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Major Diseases and their Control (PUBH2008)
The course explores the epidemiology, risk factors, and current prevention and control strategies for the most prevalent non-communicable diseases (NCDs), both in Australia and internationally. Non-communicable diseases are the leading cause of illness and death worldwide, and many are caused by modifiable risk factors such as: tobacco use, an unhealthy diet, insufficient physical activity and harmful use of alcohol. An expert team of guest lecturers, consisting of clinicians, allied health practitioners, researchers and non-government organisations, will draw on their knowledge and experience to deliver weekly lectures. Students are encouraged to read widely, think critically, actively debate ideas and utilise knowledge from previous courses.
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Introduction to Public Health (PUBH1102)
This course helps students gain a broad understanding of the history and overarching principles of public health, and the role of the discipline in improving health and reducing health inequities. In this course, students study the multiple and interacting factors which impact on human health, including bio-physiology; behaviour; culture; and the social, material (built), and natural environments. Students are also introduced to the concepts and tools used to assess and measure the health status of populations, analyse the determinants of health, and determine the effectiveness of interventions.
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Health Services Planning & Evaluation (PUBH3001) (co-coordinated with SPH)
This course will equip students with the knowledge and skills needed to contribute to collaborative and evidence-based health services planning and evaluation. Students will examine the core components of the health services planning and evaluation process and their application in practice. The course will be structured sequentially around these core components and teaching and learning activities will be used to develop understanding through academic literature, real world examples and critical thinking and discussion. Our particular focus will be on the contemporary Australian context but international examples and case studies will also be included.
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Postgraduate

Health Promotion in Public Health (PUBH7034)
This course is designed to introduce students to the history, principles, central concepts and theories of health promotion in the context of public health to gain an understanding of how to identify health promotion priorities and strategies across the disease prevention continuum from local to global. Frameworks for health promotion action will be presented so that students understand the scope of health promotion along with basic theories of communication and the role communication skills play in health promotion action.
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Health Promotion Planning (PUBH7035)
This course is designed to equip students will the skills to critically appraise evidence and understand how to set priorities for health promotion actions for disease prevention. Students will be introduced to the processes, frameworks and tools that are fundamental in the development and planning of health promotion.
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Health Promotion Implementation and Evaluation ( PUBH7036)
This course is designed to introduce students to frameworks and tools for evaluation in health promotion. Students will gain the skills to develop comprehensive evaluation plans that facilitate the evidence needed to inform sustainable health promotion actions.
Learn more about PUBH7036