Population Health

Overview

The Population Health program at the University of Ottawa is administratively hosted by the Faculty of Health Sciences. This program is modeled on a framework that encompasses population health issues; determinants and causes of health illness inequities; and population health interventions, including programs, policies and resource distribution systems.

Unique in Canada, this program draws on a wide range of disciplines, both basic and applied. It brings together the insights of social, biological, clinical, organizational, and political sciences, among others. It also draws on and combines the strengths of quantitative and qualitative methods. The transdisciplinary approach of the program recognizes the inherent complexity of many population health problems and the need to tackle these issues through both health and other sectors.

Outcomes

The program is designed to meet the needs of a wide variety of candidates, such as health professionals and health administrators; demographers, epidemiologists and biostatisticians; social, behavioural and legal scholars; environmental scientists; and biologists with an interest in human population health.

Students are encouraged to apply the science of their individual background disciplines to issues of population health. They acquire a broad knowledge of population health through courses and the comprehensive examination, and pursue in-depth study in an area of specialization within the population health framework. Students undertake their research in a range of settings (from local to global).