Handbook

Injury prevention and control is a key public health priority. The study of injury epidemiology, prevention and control is vital to understanding causes of injury and strategies for prevention, to reduce the global burden of injuries and improve access to high quality care.This course is designed for those working in public health or related disciplines who have an interest in injury epidemiology, prevention and control, and would like to broaden their knowledge and skills. This course will develop student's capacities to apply appropriate concepts, frameworks and methods to quantify the epidemiological burden of injury (unintentional and intentional), identify risk factors including the social determinants of health and evidence-based strategies for prevention and management of injury across a range of contexts, cultures and injury types. The course will enable students to focus on an area of interest be it injury type or country context. It will provide students with appropriate theoretical frameworks and methodologies to identify evidence-based, effective strategies for both prevention and control of injury, including opportunities for advocacy.  Students will develop methodological skills in conduct of real-world research on injury, including observational studies, evaluation of interventions geared towards prevention, and quantifying the economic impact of prevention. Issues relevant to injury including context, resources, community acceptance, cultural considerations, scalability and sustainability and their impact on injury prevention and control will be considered. Throughout, the course will seek to span these conceptual and methodological areas drawing upon examples and cases from domestic and global contexts, spanning high, middle and low resource settings across a range of injury types to ensure students have a diverse understanding of the issues and are equipped for both research and practitioner roles into the future.

The course draws on internationally recognised experts with a breadth of experience, and has an emphasis on practical learning experiences using real case scenarios.

It is important that students enrolling in the course have knowledge and experience in public health or a health-related area. Interested students, who are not enrolled in a Masters program offered by the School of Population Health will need to contact the course convenor, who will assess whether they have the appropriate background, before enrolling in PHCM9792 Injury Epidemiology, Prevention and Control.