Master of Health Studies (MHST) 632

Overview

In MHST 631 Health Promotion I: Planning, learners were introduced to health promotion in Canada, health promotion best practices, and they identified and developed a research question which started the work towards their health promotion capstone project. The goal of MHST 632 Health Promotion II: Situational Assessment and Priority Setting is to provide learners with the knowledge and skills necessary to conduct a comprehensive situational assessment for their given health issue, as identified in MHST 631. The situational assessment will help learners assess the needs, strengths and opportunities under the broader context of the determinants of health and health equity. According to the World Health Organization, a robust situational analysis includes as assessment of social determinants of health and health needs, expectations and demand for services, health system performance and performance gaps, capacity of the health sector to respond to challenges, health system resources and resource gaps, and stakeholder positions. Learners will also create a logic model to help focus and guide their work. Learners will continue work on their Capstone initiative by developing a situational assessment. Building off the identified research question, learners will conduct a needs assessment, environmental scan, community assessment, and develop a logic model and literature review. These tasks will lead to the continuation (and completion) of Capstone work in MHST 633 Health Promotion III: Action and Implementation.

Learning outcomes

MHST 632 is designed to help learners be able to:

1. Critically appraise evidence (e.g., published literature, grey literature, systematic reviews, promising practices) for your identified health problem and action.
2. Plan a situational assessment and environmental scan with respect to your target health promotion problem and population.
3. Interpret health promotion literature and environmental scan findings to help identify opportunities for action/solutions/implementation with relevant stakeholders and collaborators
4. Identify and develop effective strategies for engagement and knowledge translation.
5. Identify strategies to address equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility when identifying a health problem and planning action.
6. Communicate information tailored to diverse audiences and apply appropriate communication methods/techniques for action, including curation of resources and an ePorfolio.

Outline

• Unit 1: Evidence-informed public health (https://www.nccmt.ca/)
• Unit 2: Situational assessment
• Unit 3: Reviewing the literature
• Unit 4: Community assessment
• Unit 5: Stakeholder identification
• Unit 6: Building relationships and collaboration (community, stakeholders)
• Unit 7: Engagement and knowledge translation

Evaluation

To receive credit for MHST 632, you will complete four assessments, and achieve an overall course grade of C (60 percent) or better. The weighting of the composite grade is as follows:

Materials

All learning resources are available online. You are presented with a variety of online, multi-media learning resources including peer reviewed articles from the AU library, e-textbooks, videos, and movies. Many of these are open educational resources (OER). The course topic is well suited to utilizing online resources that provide access to emerging research reports and real-time interviews and newscasts that discuss trends as they are developing. You are invited to share learning resources you discover related to course content with others in the class and through your ePortfolio. Locating additional online resources will be necessary and will assist you in achieving the course learning outcomes and your own learning goals, as well as helping us develop as a learning community

Important links

• Student services in FHD
• Support services at AU
• Faculty of Graduate Studies
• Faculty of Health Disciplines
• Graduate Calendar