BSc International Disaster Management & Humanitarian Response

Year of entry: 2024

Course unit details:
War, Migration and Health

Course unit fact file
Unit code HCRI30031
Credit rating 20
Unit level Level 3
Teaching period(s) Semester 1
Available as a free choice unit? No

Overview

This is course provides a critical overview of over-arching themes and agendas in war, migration and health. This includes building understanding of how war and migration affect population and critical assessment of how health systems in Europe respond to population movements. In doing so the course aims to highlight issues of how health is conceptualised in theory and practice, the power relations and inequalities involved within and between key health populations, actors and institutions, and the key health challenges before and after war. We also explore the role of international organisations in providing humanitarian health

 

Pre/co-requisites

HCRI30032 availability

Aims

  • This course aims to understand the challenges that war and displacement bring to health, both physical and mental.
  • To understand the role of culture in relation to help-seeking.
  • To understand the global architecture of Humanitarian Health.
  • To understand War trauma and its medicalisation.  

 

Teaching and learning methods

This course is taught by means of one 2 hour lecture and one 1 hour seminar per week. The module will be delivered using lectures, individual/group structured reading, discussion and preparation sessions, and seminars. The study sessions and seminars provide a structured environment for students to initiate and carry out independent and group work. Session material including unit handouts, assigned readings and web links will be made available via Blackboard (accessed via the student system).

Knowledge and understanding

  • Understand how health is conceptualised
  • Recognise the role of power and power inequalities in health systems
  • Understand key issues affecting migrant health
  • Understand how migrant health is gendered
  • Understand and critically evaluate the links between research/ideology and policy, and policy and practice

 

Intellectual skills

  • Critically assess the role of health systems in responding to population movements
  • Exercise a reflexive and critical evaluation of health as a human experience mediated by individual, societal, cultural and global contexts
  • Use their knowledge of health system responses to migration to engage in critical reflection on health issues and the impact of health systems on migrant communities

 

Practical skills

  • Plan, research, organise and deliver workshop presentations related to specific health contexts
  • Develop oral and written presentation skills
  • Write policy briefs
  • Course unit, in relation to the students' Transferable skills and personal qualities.

 

Employability skills

Group/team working
- Teamwork - recognising and identifying views of others and working constructively with them - Negotiation - understand group dynamics and intercultural backgrounds in the use of negotiating skills to reach objectives - Awareness - working effectively within externally or poorly defined constraints as in a humanitarian health context
Innovation/creativity
- Improving own Learning - ability to improve one's own learning through planning, monitoring, critical reflection, evaluate and adapt strategies for one's learning - Awareness - working effectively within externally or poorly defined constraints as in a humanitarian health context - Initiative - able to take action unprompted and assume responsibility - Creativity - able to be innovative and apply lateral thinking in problem solving and decision making - Stress Tolerance ¿ able to use personal resources effectively to meet challenges
Project management
- Time Management - ability to schedule tasks in order of importance - Self-management - capacity for self-appraisal, reflection and time management - Adaptability - ability to respond positively to changing circumstances - Self-awareness - awareness of own strengths and weaknesses and to be able to work as part of a multidisciplinary team
Research
- Applying Subject Knowledge - use of discipline specific knowledge in everyday situations - Research - ability to plan and implement an effective research project - Ethical appreciation - a willingness to ascertain the ethical implications of proposed courses of actions or situations and to take the necessary steps to ensure that result from this analysis

Assessment methods

 

 

Assessment task 

Formative or Summative 

Length 

Weighting 

Workshop on Refugees and Health in British Cities (paired presentations). Here students work in groups and identify an issue faced by refugees in British cities and show how the health concern is being dealt with state and non-state actors.Summative 20 minutes 50%
Essay PlanFormative 500-700 words 0%
Essay Summative 2000 words 50%

 

Feedback methods

Feedback method

Formative or Summative

Written feedback on essay plans and final essaySummative Essays + Formative essays

Verbal feedback in assessed presentations and formatively in seminars and workshop discussions

Additional one-to-one feedback (during the consultation hour or by making an appointment)

 

Summative Workshops

 

Study hours

Scheduled activity hours
Lectures 20
Seminars 10
Independent study hours
Independent study 170

Teaching staff

Staff member Role
Rubina Jasani Unit coordinator

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