Ecological Public Health PG (10054.2)

There is awakening understanding that we live amidst a global environmental and ecological emergency, unprecedented in human experience. This unfolding change to the Earth system is primarily a human responsibility, magnified by technology and our capacity to alter ecosystems in ways intended to maximise human benefit. However, these activities are inadvertently but inexorably driving the environment and ecology towards thresholds, beyond which lie irreversible shifts in environmental states. Far less understood, however, societies interact with these environmental and ecological changes in ways that gravely endanger global public health.

Graduates in ecological public health will grapple with these complex, interacting issues, and be able to act in ways that transform the wider public health discipline to better understand these risks, opportunities and solutions, and thus help catalyse even wider social transformation.

Learning outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:
1. Demonstrate an understanding of what is meant by ecological public health, recognising its substantial overlap with contemporary public health;
2. Demonstrate a critical understanding of the key concepts, including the significant historical events that have shaped the evolution of environmental, ecological and social determinants of health;
3. Apply an integrated understanding of the key interactions (often two-way) between environmental, ecological and social health determinants to contemporary public health challenges;
4. Apply complex systems thinking, including of thresholds (tipping points) to contemporary public health problems; and
5. Present a coherent and sustained argument of barriers and enablers that affect the evolution and incorporation of ecological principles and understanding within wider public health and society.

Graduate attributes

1. UC graduates are professional - communicate effectively
1. UC graduates are professional - display initiative and drive, and use their organisation skills to plan and manage their workload
1. UC graduates are professional - employ up-to-date and relevant knowledge and skills
1. UC graduates are professional - use creativity, critical thinking, analysis and research skills to solve theoretical and real-world problems
2. UC graduates are global citizens - make creative use of technology in their learning and professional lives
2. UC graduates are global citizens - think globally about issues in their profession
3. UC graduates are lifelong learners - adapt to complexity, ambiguity and change by being flexible and keen to engage with new ideas
3. UC graduates are lifelong learners - reflect on their own practice, updating and adapting their knowledge and skills for continual professional and academic development

Skills development

In this unit, you will be exposed to a range of examples of public health practice, and develop an understanding of different employment options in public health, through examining the concept of ecological public health and what it means to be a public health practitioner in 2025. Ecological public health seeks to understand the systems that process good and poor health, to better understand where and how public health practitioners can intervene to support better health and wellbeing. An ecological public health perspective recognises that public health professionals may work in both 'traditional' occupations such as epidemiology, and non-traditional occupations such as studying social behaviours, wellbeing and broader policy development for wellbeing. This subject uses multiple case studies to demonstrate both the principles of systems thinking that underpin ecological public health, and to demonstrate the range of settings in which public health practitioners often work. Case studies examined in the course include disaster response, obesity, wellbeing budgeting and policy approaches, adaptation to climate change, and understanding and addressing the global nutrition transition. Through these and other examples we will discuss the different roles of public health professionals, as well as giving a strong grounding in the theories of ecological public health and understanding the systems - ecological, built and natural environment, organisational, families and communities - that influence health outcomes, and which public health practitioners seek to influence. 

Prerequisites

None.

Corequisites

None.

Incompatible units

None.

Equivalent units

None.

Assumed knowledge

None.