Overview
Focusing on how health policy is set and the intricacies of health governance, this course enables participants to horizon scan and anticipate changes to implement policies efficiently.
The challenges facing health and healthcare are vast, complex and numerous, while the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed numerous underlying fragilities in the sector. Disruptions stem from rising costs, inefficient management, demographic stresses, complex new technologies and the interface between public and private enterprises. All posing risks and opportunities that must be assessed by healthcare leaders and managers.
Health policies and practices frequently change to meet the evolution of healthcare services and public health goals. These health policies impact our practices at the local, national and international levels. Given the highly complex process of filtering health policy changes into our organisations at different levels, it is important to understand the various ways that health policy is shaped, as well as the numerous stakeholders with diverse needs and interests involved.
Health and healthcare managers need to understand how to manage health policies and law reforms as they arise. This short online course builds these crucial competencies among healthcare leaders. Enabling the proactive management of policy reform while creating resilient learning organisations through change management, the programme builds solid foundations from which to steer healthcare settings forward.
What’s involved
- Drawing on a wide range of research and professional experience, this course develops a basis in health policy alongside practical application, using numerous case study examples.
- In particular, you’ll look at the interdependencies within and outside particular health systems. You’ll also gain a detailed understanding of how health policies are crafted, gathering insights from different perspectives, as well as a range of practices and approaches. Ultimately, you’ll get to grips with how healthcare managers can impact the implementation and practices that evolve in an organisation in response to health policies and laws.
- As an action learning environment, this course provides a safe space for healthcare professionals to ask questions and interrogate content together. An effective way of assimilating new ideas and supporting deep learning, this dynamic approach also brings a greater capacity for developing high impact leadership in healthcare settings.
Programme curriculum
This course is based on a contextualised approach to learning, with online lectures delivered by the course lead and UCL academics. This is supplemented by reading, participant discussion questions and marked assignments. Much of the learning will be directed through real world case studies and project-based learning from your course lead, who is a healthcare expert.
You’ll learn material paced across three modules over a total of six weeks. Each module involves approximately 10 to 12 hours of content, which includes videos, reading, discussion forum activities and project assignments. A weekly session with the course lead provides a great opportunity to pull learning together and get involved in group discussion.
Throughout the course, you will complete self-assessments such as multiple choice quizzes and unmarked self-reflection exercises to help you work through the material. To receive a certificate of completion for this course, you will complete all the marked assignments for each module, which includes a mandatory discussion forum, short written assignments and a final project.
Who the programme is for
Our Health Policy and Practice short course is for managers across the health and healthcare sector, who have responsibility for areas of health policy and practice. You may work in human resources, in a clinical setting, policymaking or healthcare management. Or you may work in an industry related to health that requires an understanding of health policy and practice.
