Study Guide

#savoniaUAS

Curricula starting in 2022 and earlier

Savonia's new Study Guide (curriculum starting in 2023 and after) can be found here.

TYGL21SY Master's Degree Programme in Global Public Health

Curriculum responsibility: Riitta Turjamaa

Basis of Education

The Degree programme in Global Public Health is a joint programme realised by the two higher education institutes, the Deggendorf Institute of Technology (DIT) in Germany and Savonia University of Applied Sciences Ltd (Savonia UAS) in Finland. The international Programme leads to a Master´s degree in global public health, the qualification title is Master of Health Care.

The international master programme is meant for persons who are planning to work within the fields of health care and public health globally. Education offers expertise to work in both national and international professional, development and managerial tasks. As experts in global public health graduates have competence in working both in health policy and administration level. The Master´s degree gives the same eligibility for public office tenures as Master´s degrees completed in other universities and other higher education institutes of science. Master degree (in Finnish ylempi AMK) is in English Master of Health Care. In accordance with the government proposal a student which has completed an appropriate Master´s degree can be admitted for postgraduate scientific or artistic studies.

The framework of the programme has strong liaison with Human Security and One Health approaches. Human Security (HS) aims at understanding global vulnerabilities by putting focus at the human level. It reveals a broad participation and trans-disciplinary understanding of security involving multiple fields and providing insights into the varying challenges faced by different groups within communities. The core objective of HS is prevention. It emphasises the root causes of vulnerabilities, pays attention on emerging risks and emphasizes early action. It strengthens local capacities to build resilience and promotes solutions that reduce social inequality and advance respect for human rights and dignity.

One Health is an approach that support HS objectives in practice by designing and implementing programmes, policies, legislation and research in which multiple sectors communicate and work together to achieve better public health outcomes. One Health is collaborative, multisectoral, and transdisciplinary approach—working at the local, regional, national, and global levels—with the goal of achieving optimal health outcomes recognizing the interconnection between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment. One Health seeks to promote, improve, and defend the health and wellbeing of all species worldwide by enhancing interdisciplinary cooperation and by promoting leadership, management and communication to achieve these goals.

Global Public Health is defined by WHO (World Health Organisation)

Global public health, including security, is defined as the activities required, both proactive and reactive, to minimize vulnerability to acute public health events that endanger the collective health of population living across geographical regions and international boundaries. Furthermore, UN (the United Nations) launched Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDGs), which provide a global framework for development actions in various fields. The SDGs have strong liaison both with Human Security and One Health approaches. Especially one of the goals is straight in connection with global public health. Goal 3 aims to ‘ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.’ Its targets include for example: Infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, hepatitis. Non-communicable diseases and mental health. Substance abuse. Tobacco control. Access to vaccines, medicines, and Health financing and health workforce issues. In addition to, according to the EU global health policy, a comprehensive global health policy implies working in partnership with all other relevant organisations and interest groups, on areas including: Trade, Financing, Development aid, Migration, Security, climate change & environment action and Research & innovation. The EU advocates equitable, high-quality and universal healthcare coverage and promotes fair, effective financing of research to benefit the health of all including health promotion and preventive. EU is working to ensure that new multidisciplinary methods are safe, effective, accessible and affordable.

Both national and European government strategies have expressed the need for professionals in social and health area with advanced global public education and training. High quality public health competences include understanding both local and global challenges. Global public health meets diverse challenges related to population living in different parts of the world. Huge amount of available information, digital devices, assistive devices, service design, and versatile digital health solutions have the potential to anticipate health challenges and to improve lives in many ways. These technologies contribute to improving the health and well-being of populations by extending the scope, transparency and accessibility of health services and information, improving service delivery, increasing health system efficiency and empowering patients as part of a movement towards person-centred care.

The essential tenet of this programme is that both populations health and global public health can be improved, and costs reduced through the effective use of digitalisation in the health promotion and prevention, for instance. The Master’s Programme is based on combination of modern working in public health environments, encouragement of utilisation related to One Health and Human Security solutions. Globally leadership and management of public health are related to understanding of health policy and cultural aspects as well as privacy and data security issues.

The joint degree is realised in collaboration with two higher education institutions. Both DIT and Savonia UAS offer their best knowledge and competences to build modern, international joint Master’s degree programme of Public Health. Master’s degree has global Human Security framework, which connects a variety of global challenges and looks at people and their well-being rather than structures. The challenges are related health, food, water, energy and the bioeconomy. Human promoting security is channelled this way multidisciplinary mission-based on the development of our education, research and development. Through these choices master programme is supporting the UN sustainable development goals (Agenda 2030) on climate change adaptation (Paris 2015 Climate Agreement with implementing agreements) and disaster risk reduction (Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030).

We reserve the right to make changes to the curriculum due to the need to update the content being studied.