Description
‘Child and Adolescent Public Health’ is a module aiming to provide you with an understanding of the development and implementation of Public Health Programmes for children and young people using the Healthy Child Programme (HCP) from England as a model. Learning will adopt a population health approach. Although the teaching will focus on the HCP, international comparisons will be made. The module is designed to provide you with an introduction to the Universal Public Health Programme for 0-19 years olds (The Healthy Child Programme - HCP). Key elements of this will be covered and you will learn to appraise the rationale for their inclusion. This will include introducing you to the concepts of population screening programmes in the context of children’s health, to implementation of childhood vaccine programmes and the factors associated with successful programmes and to sources of data on child and maternal health and their strengths and weaknesses for evaluating and monitoring the HCP.
By the end of the module, you will be able to:
- Describe the main components of the Healthy Child Programme for children and young people and discuss the rationale for their inclusion.
- Describe and appraise how the HCP is implemented and evaluated
- Access and use different sources of data on child health appropriately.
This is an optional advanced module open to Year 3 students on the BSc Population Health Sciences Programme. There is availability for UCL elective students from other departments. However, spaces are limited and are allocated on a ‘first come, first served’ basis on Portico.
You will be attending lectures by researchers and clinicians actively researching in the fields of interest. You will also engage in group discussion and hold student-led group presentations. This module runs in Term 1 of the academic year.
Module leads: and
Selected Reading List:
- Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. 2020 State of Child Health in the UK.
- A. Emond. 2019 Health for all Children – Section 6: Components of a healthy child programme. Oxford University Press.
- Public Health England. 2015 Rapid Review to Update Evidence for the Healthy Child Programme 0–5.
- Office for Health Improvement and Disparities 2023 Healthy Child Programme https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/healthy-child-programme
- UK National Screening Committee
Module deliveries for 2024/25 academic year
Last updated
This module description was last updated on 19th August 2024.
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