BRAC JPGSPH MPH curriculum strives to produce transformative public health leaders who can “think out of the box.” By exposing them to the myriad of public health challenges in disadvantaged communities, we prepare them to actively work towards finding local and global solutions. With its “field-to-classroom” philosophy, the Programme moves away from the traditional pedagogical approach to public health and provides an education unlike any other.
1. Experiential Learning in the Community: In addition to interactive classroom learning, students get the opportunity to practically work in the community on different public health problems across different areas of public health. This work offers practical experience and learning relevant to diverse public health urban and rural context.
2. Problem based Learning: Public health problem is considered to be at the core of teaching and learning strategy at BRAC JPG SPH MPH Programme. During the course work students are engaged in systematic exercise and critical thinking on identification of a public health problem in a given public health context. For example, during the qualitative research method module students conduct a small scale exploratory qualitative research with the traffic police to understand their occupation hazard. Students undertake problem based learning in 13 modules.
3. Public Health Intervention based learning: During the course work students also get the opportunity to build good understanding of public health interventions in the developing world context. Students critically examine the effectiveness of an ongoing public health intervention implemented by NGO, INGO and Government of Bangladesh. Students get this intervention based public health learning in 15 modules.
4. Actively engaging with multi-stakeholders: Part of the unique learning experience at MPH Programme includes engaging with government ministries, NGOs, development and bi-lateral partners, public health practitioners and activists working across diverse sectors. Experts or practitioners are invited to speak in face to face panel session or structured simulation session. For example, during Environment, Health and Climate Change students conducts an intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with experts who have represented Bangladesh in global IPCC panel.
5. Case-Based Teaching & Learning: Thoughtfully designed and developed narratives on specific public health problems are used during collaborative learning and active discussions in the classroom. This approach creates a learning space, which maximises interactions between students, sensitivity to their peers’ responses, and encourages overall critical thinking and a problem-solving learning approach.
6. Structured Mentoring: During the course work MPH students are assigned with a mentor who closely work with the student group and provide conceptual clarity and specific feedback to the students work. For example, during the first module ‘Introduction to Public Health Module’ one particular mentor is assigned with each student group to help them understand the community settings and explore pattern of public health challenges. After the field work is done by the student, respective mentor offers structured feedback to understanding public health empathy. Similar structured mentoring is an integral part of public health learning in all 18 modules.
7. Summative Learning Project (SLP) - a team-based summative learning approach to building competencies in public health research: Adopted in in 2014, this new framework for group research approach, Summative Learning Project (SLP) is a systematic approach where student-researchers contextualize a public health problem being engaged in a group (5-7) rather than an individual. The student researchers would look at the problem from different critical lenses under the direct supervision and guidance of a supervisor and two to three assigned mentors in a given timeline (maximum nine weeks) with need-based refreshers arranged at different points of time. The rationale was to stimulate extensive peer interaction and group learning to enable each student taking ownership of his/her own learning graph through working on their specific piece of research question yet ensuring optimum participation in the group by contributing to one general research question as a team.
