Public Health Customized Training Solutions in Leadership, Strategic Communications, and Working with Vulnerable Populations
Public Health Leadership Topics
The multidisciplinary nature of both health policy and health management presents both challenges and opportunities. These topics address problems relevant to health policy, health services delivery, outcome measurement, patient safety, leadership, and organizational management relevant to health care organizations and systems.
1. Management Principles for Public Health Professionals
Participants will develop an in-depth understanding of the theory and practice of management skills required as Public health practitioners. Topics covered include the core key functions of management, planning, organizing, leading and controlling, social responsibility, and managing change.
2. Project Planning for Public Health Professionals
Participants will develop an in-depth understanding of working successfully in a project environment. Topics covered include defining the project, planning the project, implementing the plan, scheduling, communications, resource considerations, cost planning and performance (evaluation), and completing the project.
3. Leadership Principles for Public Health Professionals
Participants will apply the foundational framework of knowledge and critical thinking skills needed for effective leadership of public health organizations. Topics covered Include theories, values, issues and skills of leadership, tools for effective motivation and the relationship of communication to organizational effectiveness.
4. Resource Management for Public Health Professionals
Participants will examine the role of human resource management in a public health setting. The strategic importance of effective HRM in a knowledge based learning organization is becoming increasingly important. Topics covered include staffing for organizational effectiveness, work design, training and development, labour relations, health and safety, performance management, and legal issues.
Public Health Strategic Communications Topics
Health Communication is a multidisciplinary field with the objective to share public health information to multiple audiences. The goals of the public health communication training topics is to influence, engage, and support individuals, communities, health professionals, special groups, policy makers and the public to champion, introduce, adopt, or sustain a behaviour, practice, or policy that will ultimately improve health outcomes.
1. Public Health Communication: From Theory to Practice
Participants develop an in-depth understanding of current health communication theories as well as the approaches and action areas of public health communication. Contextual issues including cultural, geographic, socioeconomic, ethnic, age and gender are addressed. Theories are extended to the planning, implementation and evaluation of communication strategies.
2. Public Health Communication: Becoming a Knowledge Broker
Knowledge Translation is defined by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) as a dynamic and iterative process that includes the synthesis, dissemination, exchange and ethically sound application of knowledge to improve health. Participants will become familiar with the knowledge-to-action framework. Applying the knowledge-to-action cycle, participants will learn the skills of knowledge brokering- bridging the gaps between research, policy, and decision making in Public Health.
3. Social and Behavioural Change for Public Health
Theories of health behaviour identify the targets for change and the methods for accomplishing these changes. Participants will examine theories that inform the evaluation of change efforts that help to identify outcomes to be measured, as well as the timing and methods of study to be used.
Public Health for Vulnerable Populations Topics
These topics focus on health equity – the absence of unfair and avoidable or remediable differences in health among social groups – and populations who experience a disproportionate burden of health and social disparities in society. A special emphasis is placed on recognition that the human right to health implies the empowerment of disadvantaged communities to exercise the greatest possible control over the factors that determine their health.
1. Urban Health and Healthy Public Policy
Where people live affects their health and chances of leading flourishing lives. An ever-growing proportion of the global population lives in urban areas. The proportion of Canadians (80%) who live in urban areas has increased steadily since Confederation. Urban areas are often unhealthy places to live, characterized by heavy traffic, pollution, noise, violence and social isolation. People in urban areas experience increased rates of non-communicable disease and injury, with the poor typically exposed to the worst environments. This course will examine ways to tackle these challenges and improve urban public health.
2. Indigenous Health and Healthy Public Policy
This course will examine the major health inequities experienced by Indigenous Canadians today and the reasons behind them. Participants have the opportunity to critically examine and reflect on the causes of these problems and their solutions; embedded within the historical, social, cultural, and political realities of Indigenous Peoples today. By the end of the course, participants will have acquired a broad, critical understanding of the major challenges confronting Indigenous people in Canada and the health impacts of these challenges. The course will prepare participants to undertake positions in public health that involve the planning of policies and programs for urban Indigenous peoples and those living in First Nations communities.
3. Public health for Children and Youth at Risk
This course will examine the social, political, and cultural factors that shape the health of socially disadvantaged children from infancy through adolescence in Canada. A life course perspective is used to examine the role childhood plays in creating and maintaining socioeconomic health inequalities in later adulthood. By the end of this course, participants will understand the impacts that latency effects, pathway effects and cumulative effects have on health across the lifespan. Participants will be able to describe recent trends in governmental approaches aimed at reducing health disparities among socially vulnerable children and youth in Canada, and compare these approaches internationally. The course will prepare participants to undertake positions in public health that involve the planning of policies and programs aimed at reducing health inequalities among socially vulnerable children and youth.
4. Public Health and Labour Market Disadvantage
Employment and working conditions are important determinants of health, providing individuals an income as well as a sense of identity, belonging and structure in their day-to-day lives. Canadians who are disadvantaged in the labour market are a vulnerable population. This includes individuals who are frequently unemployed, underemployed, or employed in unhealthy or insecure work environments. This course uses a multilevel perspective to (1) examine the impacts of labour market disadvantage on health; (2) introduce participants to pathways that may explain these impacts; and (3) identify actions to reduce labour market disadvantage and its health impacts on Canadians.
5. Public Health and Socially Marginalized Populations
This course will examine the public health impacts of social marginalization among key groups in Canada. The degree to which these populations experience income and employment disparities and discrimination as compared to other wealthy developed nations of the OECD is critically examined. Implications for strengthening public policies in Canada to improve the health and wellbeing of socially marginalized groups in Canada are discussed and debated.
6. Interpersonal Violence and Public Health
This course considers the causes and public health consequences of interpersonal violence in Canadian society. Upon completion of this course participants are able to identify and describe, in epidemiological terms, the nature and magnitude of interpersonal violence in Canada; (2) describe the major biological, psychological, socio-cultural, and political causes of violence; (3) critically evaluate Canada’s approach to preventing interpersonal violence against citizens and assisting victims as compared to international efforts in other developed countries; and (4) identify policies and programs that will fill the gaps in current efforts.