Foundations of Public Health Practice: Behaviour & Behaviour Change

Course Overview

The Health Protection course is the third instalment of the wider Foundations of Public Health Practice specialisation from Imperial College London's Global Master of Public Health (MPH). The scope and content of this course has been developed from the ground up by a combined team of academics and practitioners drawing on decades of real-world public health experience as well as deep academic knowledge. Through short video lectures, practitioner interviews and a wide range of interactive activities, learners will be immersed in the world of public health practice. Designed for those new to the discipline, over three modules (intended for three weeks of learning), learners will become familiar with the scope, theory and implementation of behaviour change in the context of public health practice. The course begins by challenging learners about their preconceptions about healthy and unhealthy behaviour - seeking to contextualise these ideas within the broader public health approach (the first course of this specialisation). The course thereafter swiftly covers the origins of risk communication and behaviour change through the lens of health psychology and classical economics, before introducing ideas of bounded rationality and the genesis of behavioural insights and so-called Nudges. By the end of the course, learners will be fluent with their use of the Behaviour Change Wheel methodology of intervention development and the application of the COM-B framework to a range of target behaviours and behavioural barriers. The subsequent courses of this specialisation will cover health protection before moving into the final (degree learner) course which where learners will focus on developing the core professional skillset that defines public health practitioners - whether in service or academia.