Public Health Policymaking

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Students will become familiar with the following topics in public health: the epidemiology of mortality and disease; the determinants of health; the ageing of society and its implications for medical care; the unequal distribution of health; moral issues in public health; the economics of public health; health systems analysis; public health genomics; markets and public health; public health disasters. Students will become familiar with the following topics in public policymaking: the various components of public policy (values, objectives, instruments, policy paradigm); the concept of the policy cycle (problem recognition and definition, agenda building, policy formation, policy implementation, policy evaluation and feedback); theoretical approaches of public policy making (rational model, political model, institutionalist model); stakeholder and policy community analysis; types of state-society relationships (elitist model, pluralist model, corporatist model, regulatory agency model, communitarian model); the role of power in public policymaking. Regarding the third objective, students will learn to combine the knowledge gained under the first and second objective. Concretely, they learn to understand the implications of public health issues for public policymaking (e.g. how can we effectively tackle the problem of overweight/obesity or the problem of the unequal distribution of health? Which moral issues arise in public policymaking?) and, conversely, the implications of the structure and process of public policymaking for addressing public health issues (e.g. how are public health issues defined? Who dominates the agenda building process? What are the implications of the rational, political and institutionalist model for public health policymaking? What about the role of the state and society in public health policymaking? What are the specific characteristics of public policymaking in case of public health disasters?)