MSc International Disaster Management

Fees for entry in 2027 have not yet been set. For reference, the fees for the academic year beginning September 2026 were as follows:

• MSc (full-time)
  UK students (per annum): £14,700
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £30,700

The fees quoted above are fully inclusive of tuition, administration and computational costs.

Fees for entry are subject to yearly review. The University reserves the right to increase your tuition fee by up to 7% each year for courses lasting more than one year, including to reflect rising costs associated with delivering our educational and wider student experience. Postgraduate fees information .

Always contact the admissions team if you are unsure which fee applies to your qualification award and method of attendance.

International student CAS deposit

Self-funded international applicants are required to pay a deposit of £2500 towards their tuition fees before a confirmation of acceptance for studies (CAS) is issued. Some applicants will be required to pay a higher deposit. More information on tuition fee deposits .

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

We know that student finance can be complicated. The links below provide further information to help guide you.

• Learn more about - student finance options for UK students.
• Learn more about - fees and finance for international students .
• Graduates of The University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University can receive a 10% discount on their master's degree tuition fees as part of our Manchester Alumni Loyalty Discount scheme.

Who gets sick, what disease afflicts them, what treatments are available and what outcome they will have are determined by an interaction of social, political and economic forces. In the past modules, you have learnt about Social determinants of health and the fundamentals of good health systems. This module takes the learning from the previous modules by bringing the ‘community’ - defined both in the broadest and the narrowest sense - at the core of the analysis of health. Why are there regional disparities in certain diseases despite global campaigns to handle them? How are these global campaigns received locally? Why do some of them fail in certain regions? These are some of the questions that this course will answer. Academically, this module will draw from literatures in sociology of health and illness, medical sociology/anthropology and social psychiatry. 

This is a distance learning module and is therefore tailored to the needs of those working in remote locations.

The unit aims to:

This course aims to introduce students to the theory and practice of community medicine to understand how practitioners can work with communities in order to change some of the adverse health outcomes. It should allow practitioners to understand why outcomes of certain illnesses are different in different countries and why they vary widely within the same country.

Students will be able to: 
Mobilise the knowledge from the previous session to identify practical solutions and challenges raised by community approaches to health aiming at improving the health of historically excluded communities. Discuss in which circumstances community approaches to health may be useful and/or detrimental and lastly, imagine how community health initiatives may be improved in the future and in different contexts

This module will enable students to understand and evaluate various approaches to community health. Understand concepts like stigma and help seeking and assess successes and failures of health campaigns by critical engagement with ideas of culture and health.

 

Syllabus (indicative curriculum content):

Session 1: Theories of Community Approaches to Health Key concepts and theories for community participation in health This session will introduce key concepts and theories in community approaches to health. We will start by locating community health in what students have learnt previously on social determinants of health. We will define what communities are and how they relate to health. We will introduce students to the basic theories that allow us to locate health sociologically.

Session 2 Illness Perception and Health Seeking Behaviour; In this session we will discuss cultures and communities, help-seeking patterns and local perceptions of common illnesses. This will allow us to understand why and how some of the major public health campaigns fail and how knowledge of culture and power can help to improve pub

Session 3: Medical Pluralism.  
Different medicines? Medical pluralisms and Systems of Medical Knowledge The role of culture and alternate belief systems opens up the world of alternate medicine and other systems of medical knowledge. The methods of these medicines are diverse in their foundations and methodologies and draw on traditional medical practices, folk knowledge and spiritual beliefs.

Session 4:  Mental Health and Trauma
This session will look at mental health and trauma related to disasters and conflicts. We will discuss post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a medical diagnosis; its history and establishment as a tool for legitimising suffering. We will engage with the tension between various disciplines (psychiatry, psychology and sociology), when it comes to the operationalisation of PTSD.

Session 5: Learning from the Experts:  

This session will give students the opportunity to hear from actors involved in awareness raising and activism to improve access to healthcare in relation to historical, social and cultural contexts. The speakers will discuss community-led health campaigns, and measures put in place in order to tackle two health problems (HIV/AIDS; and broader access to palliative care on the African continent.

Session 6:  Stigma and Discrimination
Fear of stigma and discrimination can stop people from seeking medical help. The causes of this discrimination could be institutional or personal - racial, gendered, geographical - or tied into local ideas of health and ill health. Health disparities can be experienced by ethnic minority populations, but also by people living in rural areas, on the margins of urban locations, by women and children and by people living with long-term disabilities. This session will look at institutional discrimination and individualised stigma related to diseases.

Session 7:   Health Promotion:  
This session will look at key principles of health promotion and explore some case studies to consider where this model has worked, along with the challenges individuals and institutions face with this approach. We will consider early public health information mass media campaigns, and more participatory approaches to health promotion, such as peer education. We will also explore attempts to develop ‘inclusive’ approaches to reduce inequities in health promotion.

Session 8: Limitations of Community Approaches to Health
In thus session will discuss the limitations of mainstream approaches to community participation. Based on a case study in Valle del Huasco in Chile, we will discuss the role of social movements and resistance strategies in community empowerment and radical changes for the practice of community participation in health.

 

This module will be delivered through an asynchronous distance learning methodology within the University Canvas system. It will consist of presented written and pre-recorded video material each week with associated core reading provided through the library reading list system and access to supplementary reference material.

Students will engage in formative asynchronous discussion board conversation with peers and the course leadership on a weekly basis. A core trigger question for discussion is presented and ideas and concepts developed from this over the week being taught and the following week before being closed to further submission but remaining available for reference. This ensures that the whole cohort moves through the material together. 

• Understand the theoretical underpinnings within sociology and anthropology as they are applied to health and medicine. 
• To understand how social, economic and political factors affect health outcomes. 
• To engage critically with the role of culture and other non-biomedical models of health and well being

• Re-think the concept of community health by locating medicine and medical practices socially. 
• Understand the role of culture in the practise of health
• Understand health as a holistic process and engage with other explanations of health and illness.

• Identify the causes of adverse health outcomes. 
• Integrate culture and context in planning health initiatives at the community level.

• Critical analysis of health and illness 
• Locate community health holistically.

Summative:

2000 word essay - 90%

Discussion Board Contributions - 10%

Feedback Method	Formative or Summative
Office hours	Formative
Written feedback on discussion board posts	Formative
Written feedback on critical essay	Summative

Written feedback on summative assessment within 15 working days.

Boyd, K.M., 2000. Disease, illness, sickness, health, healing and wholeness: exploring some elusive 
concepts. Medical Humanities. 26(1), pp.9-17.

Falmer. et.al. 2001. Community Approaches to HIV treatment in Resource Poor Settings. The Lancet. 
Vol 358. pp.404 -409.

Marmot. M. 2006. Health in an Unequal World. Lancet. 368. 2081 -294.

Wikman, A., Marklund, S. & Alexanderson, K., 2005. Illness, Disease and Sickness Absence: An empirical test of differences between concepts of Ill-health. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 59(6). pp.450-4.

Additional Readings:
Bruce, L. and Phelan.J. 1995. Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of Disease. Journal of Health 
and Social Behaviour. Vol. 35, pp. 80-94.

Kleinman, A., 1978. Concepts and a model for the comparison of medical systems as cultural 
systems. Social Science & Medicine. 12(2B), pp.85-95.

Macinko, J. & Harris, M. J. 2015 Brazil’s Family Health Strategy — Delivering Community-Based 
Primary Care in a Universal Health System, New England Journal of Medicine, 372. Pilgrim, D. (2017) Key Concepts in Mental Health, Sage: London (not available digitally).

William. G. 2003. The Determinants of Health: Structure, Context and Agency. Sociology of Health and Illness. Vol 25. Pp. 131-154