Imperial College MPH

The list of MPH summer research projects has now been circulated to students. There is a wide range of projects on offer. Some additional projects will be circulated in January.

HealthcarePromotions.co.uk is a new website that acts as a gateway to health promotion materials. There are over 600 links to various UK-based health promotion resources covering over 60 health topics such as Healthy Eating, Heart Disease and Diabetes. There are also links to leaflets, posters and factsheets.

Three Academic Clinical Fellow Posts in Public Health linked to Imperial College are currently being advertised. For further details of the application process, please see the London Deanery website . The job description is also available on the London Deanery Website. The deadline for applications is December 4th 2009. The posts offer the opportunity to undertake public health training with an academic focus and dedicated time for research. Please note, these posts are only open to medically qualified candidates with full GMC registration.

Former chairman and founder of the International Education Fund , Adeel Iqbal, received Imperial College's prestigious 'Student Award for Outstanding Achievement'. Adeel and his dedicated team invested much energy and enthusiasm into developing an organisation which brings together the talents of enthusiastic students to bring about positive academic changes in third world countries. Amongst Adeel's major achievement has been partnering with a school for blind children in Kashmir. The IEF is growing rapidly and is now under the leadership of fifth year medical student Suha Bachir who is launching a project to help refugee children in the Western Sahara, Africa. This project is to be launched on the 11th November 2009 at Imperial College Business School.

Medics at Imperial College Business School is a new student club formed to act as a networking portal for doctors enrolled onto the various MSc and MBA courses at the Business School and the MPH Programme in the Faculty of Medicine. It will provide a common ground for medics looking to diversify their career and take-up challenging roles both inside and outside of clinical medicine. The group plans to invite alumni and other guest speakers to the business school to share their experiences and also invite companies working in the healthcare sector for campus presentations and networking sessions. In the long term, it will become a connecting link between the business school and the medical profession by organizing talks to discuss issues that matter the most to healthcare. The group held a successful evening event on global health on July 24 2009. Watch-out for other dates and do join the group or email any suggestions you may have to suraj.bassi08 at imperial.ac.uk or ayodele.kazeem...

Our recommended statistical package for the MPH course is Stata . All students are supplied with a copy of Stata for their laptops and it is also available on teaching classroom PCs. Stata provides many functions for data analysis, data management, and graphics. Although Stata can be run in a menu-driven 'point & click mode', we recommend that you take the time to learn Stata commands and use the command-line interface. Christopher Baum from Boston College explains why this is good idea . There are many useful Stata resources on the web. A few are listed below. http://www.cpc.unc.edu/services/computer/presentations/statatutorial http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/ http://data.princeton.edu/stata/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stata

Facilities for MPH students at the Reynolds Building at the Charing Cross Hospital Campus include the library on the Second Floor. This has study areas, wi-fi facilities, and a computer lab (approx 25 PCs). There is also another computer lab in the basement (next to ICT) with about 15 PCs. There is also the open area on the First Floor which can’t be booked but is quite useful for group breakout activities. There is also the student bar and canteen on the ground floor of the Reynolds Building.

The 2009-10 MPH course starts on Monday October 5th at St. Mary;s Hospital. On Tuesday October 6th, students will be in the Department of Primary Care & Social Medicine at the Charing Cross Hospital Campus. Some recommended reading for students is listed below. Bonita R, Beaglehole R and Kjellstrom T (2006) Basic Epidemiology (2nd ed.). World Health Organization, Geneva. Hennekens C and Buring J (1987) Epidemiology in medicine. Lippincott, Williams and Wilkins. Peacock J and Kerry S (2007) Presenting Medical Statistics from Proposal to Publication: a Step-by-Step Guide. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Pencheon D, Guest C, Melzer D and Gray M Eds. (2006) Oxford Handbook of Public Health Practice (2nd Edition). Oxford University Press, Oxford. Rose G (2008) The Strategy of Preventive Medicine, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

The MPH Research Project Presentations were held on Monday September 21 2009. The prize for the best dissertation went to Dr Yolande Knight for her dissertation on A nutritional survey of children in East Sepik Province, New Guinea . Many congratulations to Yolande. The two highly commended dissertations were by Dr Dan Gibbons ( The effect of screening and prophylactic colectomy on the survival of patients with familial adenomatous polyposis ) and Ms Minttu Ronn ( The emergence of Lymphogranuloma Venereum amongst men who have sex with men )

The MPH research project presentations will take place on Monday September 21st 2009, starting at 10AM, in the MSc Room in the Department of Epidemiology, Medical School Building, St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington. All welcome.

The Faculty of Public Health (FPH) is the standard setting body for specialists in public health (medical and non-medical). The FPH Website is a good starting point for those MPH students interested in a career in public health in the UK's NHS.

A reminder to all MPH students that the deadline for handing in dissertations is September 3rd. This year, our students have undertaken some very interesting summer research projects and we look forward to reading their dissertations.

The Imperial College Master of Public Health programme provides a comprehensive introduction to public health for students intending to practice in public health or related fields. This course represents an exciting focus for the Division of Epidemiology, Public Health and Primary Care in the Faculty of Medicine. The course follows a shared path with the MSc in Modern Epidemiology in the first term. It offers a cutting edge knowledge and skills base for both non-medical and medically qualified students. It is particularly suited to students who wish to pursue a career in public health research based on quantitative analytical skills. Objectives of the course are to teach students how to: - Design, analyse, interpret and evaluate epidemiological and biomedical research. - Demonstrate an understanding of the essential principles of modern biostatistical methods. - Apply current research methods in key areas of chronic disease epidemiology, infectious disease epidemiology, and environmen...

We are always interestd to hear from our Alumni. We recently heard from one of of our former students, Malika Ahmad, that she had been successful in obtaining a Research and Training Coordinator post with the Aga Khan Health Service in Pakistan (AKHSP), a branch of the Aga Khan Development Network . Malika informs us that AKHSP - in collaboration with GAVI ALLIANCE and the Government of Pakistan - is working on an 18 month project related to maternal and child health. This is an intiative by the GAVI Alliance to see if public-private partnerships work in developing countries where infant and maternal mortality is high. Pakistan was chosen as one of the 10 pilot countries and AKHSP was chosen as the implementing Civil Society Organisation (CSO). Malika will be working in an underdeveloped area known as Tando Allayar in the province of Sindh. The project was launched in Hyderabad on August 4th 2009. Read the press report .

The 2008-09 MPH course is now coming to an end. Students will be submitting their research projects for assessment in the next few weeks. Recruitment to the new academic year (2009-10) is going well and we are expecting 30+ students.