Dr Sharon Ghuman

For students taking MSc Development Management, MSc Development Studies, MSc Global Politics, MSc Health Population and Society, MSc Health, Community and Development, MSc Population and Development, MSc Human Rights and MSc Biomedicine, Bioscience and Society. Also available to all other MSc students, space permitting, with the approval of the course teacher and their own programme directors.

This course deals with emerging challenges to human health and society, with particular reference to the developing world. It examines relevant theoretical and conceptual frameworks, the mechanisms through which new diseases and threats to heath arise, their social, political, economic and other consequences, and considerations relevant to policy. An important focus is on HIV/AIDS, and the consequences of the disease. Other topics include non-communicable diseases, new and resurgent infections, and environmental hazards to health.

The course begins with an overview of basic concepts and issues (e.g. epidemiological transition theory) and individual and ecological perspectives on health and disease. In the first half of the course the focus will be on HIV/AIDS in terms of history, distribution, and basic epidemiology, and consequences (demographic, social, and economic and at the individual/household and community levels) and the balance between prevention and treatment strategies. The course aims to provide up-to-date knowledge of the HIV/AIDS situation and materials will draw upon the experience of many countries and different regions. The course will then consider other emerging health threats arising from urbanisation and globalization, shifts in patterns of food consumption, alcohol/tobacco use, environmental changes and development initiatives.

There will be a one-and-a-half hour lecture and a one-and-a half hour seminar each week during LT.

Short essay(s)

(A detailed weekly reading list will be provided at the first Lecture). T Barnett & A Whiteside, AIDS in the Twenty-First Century, Disease and Globalization, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002; T McMichael, Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease, Past Trends, Uncertain Futures, Cambridge University Press, 2001; World Bank, Confronting AIDS: Public Priorities in a Global Epidemic, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998. Relevant journals include AIDS, Social Science and Medicine and Population and Development Review.

One unseen two-hour exam in the ST (80%) and coursework (20%).