Outline of the Block

The assessment block CM5805 Case Study provides you with the opportunity to critically examine an agreed process of change when implementing an intervention and/or programme in health promotion and public health. The case study enables you to identify an intervention and to model how the intervention can be implemented in practice and to critically explore any possible limitations and possibilities, facilitators and challenges, when implementing change.

The case study needs to be theoretically informed and is multidisciplinary in nature and thereby can draw across a range of study blocks from the MSc Public Health and Health Promotion programme. In particular, the case study needs to be situated within the societal, political, policy, ethical, global/local, diverse, cultural, multidisciplinary and complex contexts in which the practice of health promotion and public health takes place. The case study therefore allows you to link theory and practice through a critical exploration of a significant area within health promotion and public health.

In contrast to the examination (which assesses breadth of learning), the Case Study has been designed to allow you to demonstrate your depth of knowledge and understanding, and your capacity to critically appraise the fields of health promotion and public health, and the aspects that influence their practice (for example, policy and policy making, the social and cultural context in which practice is enacted and so on).

Submission Date: Tuesday 19th April 2016 at 4pm

Learning Outcomes

This assessment block provides opportunities for you to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding (K), critical cognitive (thinking) skills (C) and other skills and attributes (S) in relation to public health and health promotion. In particular, by the end of this block, and the related study blocks, you should be able to:

• Show ways that change can be implemented in public health and health promotion and demonstrate facilitators and challenges to change (K);
• Show knowledge and understanding of aspects of principles, concepts, theories, advanced skills in public health and health promotion (C, S);
• Demonstrate an understanding of public health and health promotion that draws on a range of perspectives (K);
• Discuss and critique contemporary public health and health promotion issues and debate and explore the benefits and challenges of multidisciplinary approaches (K);
• Analyse and evaluate the evidence in relation to public health and health promotion policy and practice from a range of perspectives (C);
• Translate and apply theoretical concepts, evidence, principles and related policies to public health and health promotion contexts (C);
• Communicate effectively and be reflective and critical in your approach to public health and health promotion (S);
• Present coherent ideas and constructive arguments (K, C);
• Demonstrate cultural and ethical sensitivity in the context of public health and health promotion (K, C).

It is important that towards the end of the CM5706 Implementing Change Assessment Block, and the related Study Blocks, you engage in a critical self- appraisal of the extent to which you feel you have achieved these learning outcomes. They should also form the basis for your understanding of what you need to do as you engage with and complete the assessment itself.

The Case Study

During the Spring Term, within the study block CM5706 Implementing Change, you will have the opportunity to work towards identifying, developing and completing a written Case Study. You can utilise your learning from different study blocks within the MSc Public Health and Health Promotion programme and apply the concepts, theories and approaches that have been discussed within these to a specific and agreed public health and health promotion intervention and/or programme of change of your own choosing.

The Case Study should be 5000 words and should take one of two forms.

Chose from Either:

1. Critically discuss and evaluate an existing public health or health promotion intervention or programme

Or:

2. Critically discuss and evaluate a proposal for a public health or health promotion intervention or programme that could be undertaken.

In both options, the programme or intervention could be one that you have been or are likely to be involved with yourself; or it could be something that you are evaluating ‘from a distance’. The programme or intervention could be something that aims to improve health at individual, group, community or population level. As discussed across the Study Blocks, ‘health improvement’ should be broadly understood in relation to models of health and well-being and not simply confined to illness prevention according to the medical model. (Although of course you may choose to write about an intervention or programme of this kind, it must be- as with any other- subject to a ‘critical gaze’ with regard to its strengths and limitations.). You could frame within models that conceptualise health promotion as a discipline or you could examine the intervention in relation to health promotion intervention planning models. Making links to the literature enables you to scrutinize an intervention critically.

Examples of possible programmes or interventions include (but are certainly not limited to): working with individuals to consider changes to their health behaviours, or changes to their health status: working with a community to identify relevant health-related issues and how these might be addressed; and working with or lobbying policy makers for changes to structures and circumstances that are likely to affect health. During the course of the various Study Blocks you will have engaged in extensive discussion of these and other kinds of public health and health promotion interventions and programmes. Use this as an opportunity to consider in depth an intervention, its theoretical basis, and the evidence of its effectiveness that is or should be gathered. Please do not use a case study from Professor Mary Gilhooly’s module Global Public Health CM5701.

Structure of the Assignment

Whether you choose to write about existing work, or about a proposal for new work, your assignment must include the following components:

• A review of what is known already about this kind of intervention or programme, and the context in which it takes place (maximum 1500 words);
• A critical evaluation of the intervention or programme, which includes issues, such as, what is known about its actual or likely effectiveness: the values that it contains and the extent to which these do (or do not) align with the values of those likely affected by it; the extent to which it does (or does not) advance ‘good practice’ in public health and health promotion (which needs to include a specific understanding and justification of ‘good practice’ within these fields in the first place) and how it relates to models of change and theoretical considerations and models in health promotion (maximum 2500 words).

In practice, while all these components need to be present in your writing, it is likely that a neat division in this way will be neither possible nor helpful. (For example, there is likely to be substantial crossover between your literature review/analysis and your critical evaluation of the programme or intervention.) We have identified the components explicitly in this assignment brief in order to ensure that you know these are the areas you must cover in your writing.

Most emphasis in your final submission needs to be placed on the last component- critical evaluation- but of course you cannot really engage with the intervention or programme in this kind of critical way unless you have already really thought about it through careful analysis of related literature etc.