MPH Public Health (Web-based Learning) / Course details

This course unit is for students who want to explore how to get the best from a system for providing oral healthcare - both treatment and prevention. It is about putting into action our plans for a service.

We aim to enable the student to understand the systems within which dental services are planned and delivered, to identify the opportunities for improvement and to anticipate and address the barriers to change.

Throughout, there is an emphasis on preventing oral health problems and on reducing inequalities. It is not assumed that students have taken any other course units prior to starting this unit.  

This unit is one of two which may be taken as the additional mandatory unit for the Dental Public Health pathway, alongside the mandatory core units of POPH60041, POPH60991 and POPH60982.

The other option is:

• POPH76061 Oral Health & Disease in Populations

• To explore the practical implementation of strategy into delivery of appropriate and effective dental services.

• To understand the potential for preventing oral disease and morbidity at individual and population level.
• To understand the potential models for financing, remuneration and workforce for dental care.
• To understand the principles of planning dental services at system and local level including care for groups with additional needs.
• To understand how quality and value for money may be ensured within a delivery system for dental care.

1. Introduction to dental services – aims, methods of addressing oral health problems, models of delivery.
2. Systems for financing and remuneration and impact on delivery of dental care.
3. Quality in dental care systems – how it may be defined, assessed and achieved.
4. Planning services for population needs at system and local level.
5. Planning workforce to match population needs.
6. How dental care systems may be changed. 
7. How dental care may be delivered for groups with additional needs and those who are hard to reach.
8. How oral health problems may be prevented at practice and population level.
9. The role and impact of regulations and legislation in dental health care systems.
10. Methods to ensure appropriate service delivery.

Teaching will be web-based, with a high degree of student-led learning through interactive exercises to test understanding built into the web-based teaching materials, and exercises and assignments involving seeking out, retrieving and reflecting upon information from a range of mainly web-based resources.

There will be opportunities for student-student and student-tutor interaction through dedicated discussion groups. Students will be encouraged to share their experiences and examples from their own practice. Material will be made as relevant as possible to the professional and organisational backgrounds of students.

Students will be provided with personalised feedback for their mid-term and final summative assignments within 15 working days for mid-term assignments and 20 working days for final submission.

Further opportunities for formative feedback (on non-assessed work) will also be provided during a course unit.

There is no set textbook. The resources are online.