Course summary

The information provided on this page was correct at the time of publication (October/November 2022). For complete and up-to-date information about this course, please visit the relevant University of Oxford course page via www.graduate.ox.ac.uk/ucas. This online Postgraduate Diploma in Global Health Research fulfils a unique training need by providing an academically rigorous and pragmatic approach that will equip students with real-world skills for designing and implementing impactful global health research across many varied topics and population settings. The course aims to enhance knowledge and raise standards of professionals working in health research in a global context so they can lead successful and high-quality research studies. Students will discover best practices in global health research studies, the mechanisms, the methods and processes required to implement good quality, safe and ethical research, typically in low resource settings. Through practical case studies and applied tasks, you will gain sufficient experience to implement what you learn in order to resolve difficult challenges and become the next generation of leaders in your field of study. The postgraduate diploma is an online four-term programme that teaches the key steps required to carry out good research in the context of global health. As a student, you will learn to formulate viable research questions, you will consider target populations within your area of interest, create study plans addressing sample size and understand the variables that might affect your results. You will learn how to avoid errors in design and implementation, the most common reasons for getting wrong answers to research questions and where possible, you will be encouraged to implement your study. The department's goal is to embed effective health research into the work of healthcare workers and allied professions. Whatever research one is planning, whether it is a randomised controlled trial, or an observational study, knowing what kind of information the study should collect is important, and so researchers may need to use epidemiology data, adapt to different social norms or utilise diagnostics to create valid, evidence based, outcomes. Whatever your research question, the postgraduate diploma will guide you from conception to execution and completion of a final report. Our graduates will conduct their research aware of the larger context within which research takes place, they will plan and implement their projects accordingly and communicate their reasoning and findings as effectively as possible, increasing the probability of successful research and turning that research into practice. The Postgraduate Diploma in Global Health Research will provide you with many transferable skills, not least higher-level critical-thinking and analytical skills to enable you to develop professionally as independent learners during and after your programme of study. At the end of the programme, we want our graduates to be intellectually curious, improve global health, gather and analyse data, lead research projects, make good decisions and continue on a journey of life-long learning, like all Oxford graduates.