Facoltà di Economia

The objective of the course is to provide students with diverse backgrounds in pre-university curricula with the following:

1. The ability to identify key basic health problems arising from the current social and financial landscape.

2. A comprehensive understanding of the fundamental components of global health.

3. The skills necessary to advocate for appropriate basic solutions aimed at advancing the sustainability of public health.

4. A foundational understanding of the economic challenges and issues related to public health.

In essence, the course aims to equip students with the knowledge and tools to recognize, analyze, and address critical health issues within the context of global health, taking into account both the social and economic factors that influence public health outcomes.

No formal pre-requisites

The course is divided into two interconnected modules:

1. Definition of Health and Health Indicators
• Definitions of health, health indicators, and main demographic determinants.
2. Natural History of Acute and Chronic Diseases
• Main differences between communicable/infectious and non-communicable/non-infectious diseases (causes, trends, consequences).
3. The Concept of Cause in Medical Sciences
• Causes, risk factors, and health/disease determinants (lifestyles, education, inequalities, social isolation, etc.).
4. Demographic and Epidemiological Transition
• Challenges and opportunities posed by the new scenario (enhanced lifespan, disabilities, migrations, etc.).
5. Global Health
• Challenges posed by the increasing burden of chronic diseases on healthcare systems and new challenges from both new and old infectious diseases (HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, SARS-CoV-2 and future pandemics); the urgent need for a global and planetary approach.
6. Health and Economics
• The need for measuring health (DALY, QALY, Global Burden of Disease, etc.).
7. Health Promotion and Protection
• Impact of public policies on health; an interdisciplinary approach.
8. Economic Evaluation in Health
• Preparedness for epidemics and economic issues: the role of WHO and other national and international institutions in managing pandemic diseases; best practices and lessons learned from pandemics (HIV/AIDS, Ebola, SARS-CoV-I and II).
9. Warfare and Health
• Health impact of war, prevention, and containment.

Attending students:
1. Slides of the course.
2. Reading material distributed by the lecturers

Non attending students (below 80% attendance): will study ONE of the following textbooks:

Main referral readings for attending students:

• OECD, (2019), Health at a Glance 2019: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/4dd50c09-en.
• World Health Statistics 2020: Monitoring Health for the SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2020. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.
• The World Health Report 2013: Research for Universal Health Coverage. WHO, 2013.
• Guinness, L., Wiseman, V., Introduction to Health Economics – Understanding Public Health, McGraw Hill, Open University Press, second edition, 2011.

Main referral readings for non-attending students:

• Routledge Handbook of Global Public Health, 1st Edition.
• Guest, C., Ricciardi, W., Oxford Handbook of Public Health Practice.

Additional materials:

• Required readings, handouts from the teacher, readings from online sources such as www.who.int, www.euro.who.int, www.worldbank.org, etc.

The course combines different teaching methods: lectures; seminars; student presentations. The lectures will provide the students with the necessary information and reading guidelines on the phenomena under study, while seminars will see students critically engage with this knowledge and encourage/participate in class debates. Students are expected to attend each class, to come to class prepared and to participate in discussions.

Students will agree the topic of their presentations with the lecturers and give assessed Power-point presentations in which they will critically evaluate the content and argument of a chosen topic and introduce related questions for the class discussion.

Course assessment
The (default )verification of learning takes place exclusively through a final examination which consists of an individual or group presentation as discussed below. The objective of the final examination is to verify the achievement of the course learning outcome. In particular, the examination assesses the student's overall preparation, ability to integrate knowledge of the different parts of the programme, consequentiality of reasoning, analytical ability and autonomy of judgement. In addition, ownership of language and clarity of exposition are assessed, in adherence with the Dublin descriptors.

Minimum score for passing the written test 18 out of 30.
After listening to the presentations, the lecturers communicate the results to the students registered for the examination via the Delphi system.
Students may take the examination on all available dates. there is no roll-call jump.

The examination will be assessed according to the following criteria:

• FAIL: important deficiencies and/or inaccuracies in the knowledge and understanding of the topics; limited ability to analyse and synthesise, frequent generalisations and limited critical and judgemental skills, the topics are set out inconsistently and with inappropriate language;
• 18-20: Barely sufficient knowledge and understanding of the topics with possible generalisations and imperfections; sufficient capacity for analysis, synthesis and autonomy of judgement, the topics are frequently exposed in an incoherent manner and with inappropriate/technical language;
• 21-23: Routine knowledge and understanding of topics; ability to analyse and synthesise correctly with sufficiently coherent logical argumentation and appropriate/technical language
• 24-26: Fair knowledge and understanding of the topics; Good analytical and synthetic skills with arguments expressed in a rigorous manner but with language that is not always appropriate/technical.
• 27-29: Comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the topics; considerable capacity for analysis and synthesis. Good autonomy of judgement. Arguments presented in a rigorous manner and with appropriate/technical language
• 30-30L: Excellent level of knowledge and thorough understanding of topics. Excellent analytical and synthetic skills and independent judgement. Arguments expressed in an original manner and with appropriate technical language.

Course evaluation for attending students:
• In-class presentations (100 %)
• Rules for the presentation: Students can work on their presentations alone or in groups. A group may comprise 2 to 4 students. The students agree on the topic of the presentations with the lecturers, individually or in groups. Each student/group prepares its presentation and emails it to the lecturers at least one day in advance of the day scheduled for class discussion. In the case of group presentations, each group member receives the same final grade.

Course evaluation for non-attending students:
• Final oral exam (100%).
• Rules for the oral exam: the final exam consists of an approximately 20-minute oral test with questions on one of the textbooks indicated above,

Attendance is required from the very first lesson and it is necessary to attend at least 80% of the course to be considered an attending student.

The Course is divided into two modules:

1st Module, Title: Changing health in a changing world, 4 CFU
2nd Module, Title: Diagnostic, Prevention and Health, 2 CFU
The objective of the course is to train students with different background in pre-university curricula to identify some of the key basic health problems involved in the current epidemiological, social and financial situation and to understand the key elements of the global health approach. In addition, students have to try advocate appropriate basic solutions for the advancement of public health sustainability. Students in the course will have some basic understanding of the economic problems related to public health.