| Introduction of the School of Public Health (SPH), The University of Tokyo |
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Outline of the School
Faculty members
Curriculum
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The purpose pf the professional degree course (professional graduate school), the School of Public Health, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo is to educate highly specialized professionals who could play an instructive role to improve the maintenance, promotion, and recovery as well as the improvement of the quality of life of the wide range of people such as national citizens, local residents, and patients. The course was newly established in 2007.
Portrait of student we seek for： The person who could promote the forefront research which contribute to improve the maintenance, promotion, and recovery as well as the improvement of the quality of life of the wide range of people such as national citizens, local residents, and patients and aim to play an active part as a highly specialized professional to play instructive and practical role in the area of the school of the public health in the future. The person who has a fundamental ability for those.
Degree： Graduates of the course will be awarded ：Master of Public Health(MPH).
Curriculum： ‘ Epidemiology’, ‘Biostatistics’, ‘Clinical Epidemiology’, ‘Medical Health Economics’, ‘Health Communication’, ‘Mental Health’, ‘Health Sociology’, ‘Geriatric Social Science’, ‘Biomedical Ethics’, ‘Health Policy’, ‘Healthcare Informatics’, ‘Forensic Medicine’ and ‘Medical Law’, ‘Patient Safety & Risk management’, ‘Health Crisis Management’, ‘Environmental Medical Health’, and etc. Degree of the Master of Public Health could be proceeded by earning more than 30 credits from compulsory subjects and optional subjects.
Field to play an active part： Possible career which could be considered for graduates :Public Health doctor who work for Health Care Administration or Health Management at the companies or organizations, Specialists of Clinical Epidemiology and Medical economics evaluation who could carry on a EBM or clinical
trials, Health Care analyzing coordinator who takes part in the evaluation of the field of Health Care or Advocacy, System Administrator of Healthcare Informatics and Medical Engineering who engage in administrative management of Medical Organization or Health Insurance Group.
1-year course： 1-year course is one of a special feature of the course. It is admitted to take an examination of 1-year course for those who have certain practical experience (please apply below chart) . For example, a doctor who has clinical experience for more than 2 years ( including the clinical training) could obtain the degree of Master of Public Health(MPH) by leave of absence from work.
Outline of the School
| Content | ||||||||
| Course | Master of Public Health course | |||||||
| Name of the department | School of Public Health | |||||||
| Director | Professor Norito Kawakami （Mental Health） 2013-2016 | |||||||
| Degree | Master of Public Health（MPH） | |||||||
| Fixed Number
of students |
Approximately 30 students: Approximately 20 students for 2-year course（Standard study year limit as 2 years）, Approximately 10 students for 1-year course（Standard study limit as 1 year） | |||||||
| Qualification
for application |
2-year course： Standard qualification for application for master course（basically graduates(or prospective graduates) of the 4-year University） 1-year course：Standard qualification for application for master course＋practical experience |
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Note: See below for practical experience required for applying 1-year course
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| Aim | This course will train ‘advanced special professional’ who promote up-to date research to engage in the maintaining, increasing, and recovering the health as well as improving the quality of life of various people including national residents, local citizens, and patients. | |||||||
| Outline | Public Health is academic and practical field which is related to the organizational approach in the society which pursue the maintenance and improvement of health and quality of life of the people. While the Clinical Medicine takes responsibility for the patient in front of you, Public Health is apparently different in the point that it takes responsibility for the group and focus on not only patients but also the healthy people in the purpose of preventing disorders. Therefore, the course provides Graduate School education to study the specialty and professional ethics related to the issue. In this Professional graduate school, the name of the course is ‘School of Public Health’ ,as publicness and professional ethics are regarded important. However, the content of the study is considered to be equivalent to the Graduate School of Master of Public Health Sciences in the foreign countries. | |||||||
| Subjects | There are totally 41 subjects provided. Some subjects are quantitative analysis type subjects such as ‘Epidemiology’, ‘Biostatistics’, and ‘Healthcare Economics’. Some subjects are related to the behavioral medicine such as ‘Mental Health’, ‘Health Education’, and ‘Geriatric Social Science’, etc. Some subjects are related to policy making and management such as’ Health Policy’, ‘Healthcare Informatics’, and ‘Patient Safety & Risk Management’, etc. Details of subjects will be introduced at the course guidance. | |||||||
| Type of students desired（provisional） | Advanced special professional who could play an active role in order to promote up-to-date research to engage in maintaining, increasing, and recovering the health and Improving the quality of life of various people including national residents, local citizens, and patients as well as play leading and practical role in the field of Public Health. | |||||||
| Formation and reinforcement policy of the educational course | In the Professional graduate school , the School of Public Health will educate advanced professionals who could (1) acquire the analytical method which target health of human group, (2) understand social system related to medical health systematically, (3) be 3 superior in the ability for policy making and management, (4) have public health mind. In the School of Public Health（Professional master degree）will form and enforce the educational course in order to achieve above aims under the following policy.
(1) Curriculum consists of the subjects group which targets the epidemiologic and quantitative analysis, the subjects group which relates to the behavioral science and social science of the field of medical health, and the subjects group that targets the policy and management which is related to medical health and the clinical scene. Subjects which relate to the global standard of the graduate school education of the Public Health should be compulsory to take. (2) For the 1-year course, practical experience and professional ethics are considered at the selection stage, and for the 2-year course, students will cultivate the self-awareness as a professional who could relate to maintain and promote the health of national citizens and local residents by gaining a chance to directly relate to the practical activities and research activities and engage in the ‘Project Study’. |
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| Degree providing policy | In the Professional graduate school, the School of Public Health, students would be awarded ‘the Master of the School of Public Health (MPH) ‘who are trained as an advanced professional specialist who gained necessary credits according to the formation and enforcement policy of the educational course who ①acquire the analytical method which target the health of human groups, ②understand the social system which relate to the medical health systematically, ③are superior to the ability for policy making and management, ④ hold ‘the Public Health Mind’ . | |||||||
| Career after graduation | Possible career for graduates of the graduate school of Public Health as follows:
（１）Staff in charge of Public Health and Health Management Specialist for companies or other organizations who work for sudden accidental matter such as SARS, Avian Influenza, Bovine Spongiform ncephalopathy(BSE), and bioterrorism, etc. ( However, basically the medical qualification is needed for those area.) （２）Professionals of the Clinical Epidemiology and Health Economics who carry on the EBM and big scale clinical trial which are the global trend of the field of Medicine. （３）Hospital worker of the Patient Safety and Risk Management or Analyst of a think tank, NGO, etc. who could provide suggestions for Medical Policy in the viewpoint of the patients and citizens. （４）Specialist of Healthcare Informatics with knowledge of the Medical System and Medical IT System who supports the head of the hospitals or Health Insurance Organizations. However, as the field which is related to the Public Health is broad, the possible career could not be limited to above 4 types. |
Faculty members (as of July 1, 2016)
| Division | Department | Professor | Associate professor | Lecturer |
| Epidemiology and Health Sciences | Biostatistics | Yutaka Matsuyama | Koji Oba | |
| Social and Preventive Epidemiology | Satoshi Sasaki | |||
| Health Economics and Epidemiology Research | Hideo Yasunaga | |||
| Health Communication | Takahiro Kiuchi | Hirono Ishikawa | ||
| Cancer Epidemiology | Manami Inoue* | |||
| Behavior Health Sciences | Mental Health | Norito Kawakami | Akihito Shimazu | |
| Health Sociology and Health Education | Naoki Kondo | |||
| Health and Social Behavior | Hideki Hashimoto | Daisuke Takagi | ||
| Health Promotion Science | Jung Su Lee | |||
| Biomedical Ethics | Akira Akabayashi | Yoshiyuki Takimoto | Yuzaburo Uetake* | |
| Human Resource Development for Health | Kitamura Kiyoshi* | Hirotaka Onishi*
Daisuke Son* |
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| Health Services Sciences | Health Policy | Yasuki Kobayashi | Satoshi Toyokawa | |
| Clinical Information Engineering | Hiroshi Oyama | |||
| Healthcare Informatics | Kazuhiko Ohe | Kayo Waki* | Hidenao Atarashi*
Ken Imai* Katsuya Tanaka* |
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| Forensic Medicine And Medical Law | Hirotaro Iwase | Yousuke Makino | ||
| Public Health Science | Takashi Fukuda* | |||
| Patient Safety and Risk Management | Yasushi Kodama* | |||
| Environmental Health Sciences | Seiichiro Osako* |
* Adjunct faculty members.
Outline of the curriculum
| Subject | Description | Credits | ||
| Epidemiology Research & Practice | In addition to lectures on basic epidemiological research methodologies, students learn through case studies of the problems which arise when putting these methodologies into practice, as well as ways to overcome them. The core themes of this subject are: epidemiological thought; demonstrating causative relationships; understanding disease onset and ensuring reliability; introduction to epidemiological research design; bias and error variance; controlling bias, particularly confounding; role of statistical analysis; research ethics & consent/protection of privacy; genetic epidemiology; research outcome feedback; and preventive medicine etc. | 2 | ||
| Preventive Health Practice & Assessment | Students learn primarily through case studies about practical initiatives linked to occupational & community preventive health based on member feedback of medical checkup results and epidemiology research outcomes. The core themes of this subject are: setting and evaluation of health objectives; development of implementing organizations & allocation of roles/costs; obtaining member consent & information feedback/communication; privacy & protection of personal information; occupational health initiative case studies (role of occupational health physicians); community health initiative case studies (role of public health nurses) etc. | 2 | ||
| Statistical Analysis of Medical Data | By learning about medical research design, statistical hypothesis testing & confidence intervals, sample size design, contingency table data analysis, regression & correlation, stratified analysis, model-based analysis, survival analysis, and multivariate analysis techniques, students acquire the basic knowledge and practical abilities required for statistical analysis of medical data. | 2 | ||
| Medical Statistics Exercise | Students learn about the main statistical methods covered in ‘Statistical Analysis of Medical Data’ using actual cases with SAS/S (or R) statistical software. Students also create hypothetical medical research (epidemiology or clinical study research) and formulate a statistical analysis plan through a group exercise, then improve their understanding of the results through debate. | 2 | ||
| Medical Research Design | This subject comprises lectures on epidemiological research & clinical trial design and actual research management, as well as case studies. The aim is to equip students with the basic knowledge required to understand studies published in key journals, and to hone their protocol drafting skills as well as the ability to participate in a research office through teamwork. The core themes of this subject are: research design types & characteristics; standardization of measurements; epidemiological research design (bias control & sample size determination etc.); clinical trial methodology (randomization & assignment, endpoint determination, interim analysis, statistical analysis principles, sample size determination, ICH guidelines etc.); introduction to sample surveys; protocol preparation; quality control & quality assurance; data management; drafting of academic papers & CONSORT statements; research cost estimation and research management etc. | 2 | ||
| Clinical Epidemiology | Subjects of clinical epidemiological studies exist in clinical practice. Researchers must find out research questions in clinical practice, make a study hypothesis and an appropriate study design, make statistical analyses with available data and make clinically valid interpretation of the results. The course provides theories and practical skills of clinical epidemiology that are essential for implementing clinical studies. | 2 | ||
| Clinical Epidemiology Exercise | The course provides hands-on training to help students write their research protocols for fund application through lectures and tutorials. The course also provides how to write medical literature. | 2 | ||
| Healthcare Economics | The course provides basic knowledge about health economics and basic methods for health economic analyses. Through lectures and group debates, students learn how to apply theories of health economics to actual health policy issues. | 2 | ||
| Health Communication | The course overviews major areas and topics of health communication including interpersonal communication in healthcare settings to media communication, and introduces current research, practice and education in health communication. Students learn basic theories and methodologies as well as methods of analysis and evaluation in health communication. | 2 | ||
| Seminar in Health Communication | Students practice skills for health communication to learn practical applications of the theories and methodologies introduced in Health Communication lecture, and to learn how to make effective health communication in various health settings including healthcare institutions, government, academic and educational institutions, patient organizations, and mass media. | 1 | ||
| Seminar in Healthcare Technology Assessment | This three-day intensive seminar will provide hands-on training to conduct health technology assessment, e.g. measurement of direct and indirect cost, benefit as is expressed in quality adjusted life years and utility, and modeling decision trees, and calculating incremental cost-effectiveness ratio with sensitivity analysis. | 1 | ||
| Seminar in Healthcare Organization Management | The course is composed of lectures on accounting, human resource management, risk control, and strategic building, complemented by case method using a case scenario of actual hospital management. Students with clinical experience >3 years will be accepted. | 2 | ||
| Introduction to Clinical Medicine | The course will provide lectures on basic knowledge about clinical medicine including anatomy, physiology, diagnosis and treatment. | 1 | ||
| Medical research and CDISC standards | The course provides the overview of CDISC (Clinical Data Interchange Consortium) Standards, which are determined be obligatory to regulatory new drug submission in Japan, U.S.A, and EU, and will be widely used for medical research data collection, exchange, archiving, etc. in medical research in general besides regulatory clinical research around the world. | 1 | ||
| Mental Health I | The half of the course provides epidemiology of mental disorders in Japan and other countries, methodology to assess mental health, and current evidence for primary, secondary & tertiary prevention of mental disorders in the community, including workplace and schools. The latter half of the course provides a series of interactive lectures on implementation of available evidence in improving mental health based on practical cases, followed by a group work to develop a new mental health program. | 2 | ||
| Mental Health II | Students learn about occupational mental health, its history & present status, relevant legislation, guidelines & systems; basic theory of occupational stress; evidence-based effective primary, secondary & tertiary prevention methods, planning, and program evaluation methods. After examining case studies on mental health policy planning based on workplace characteristics, students engage in debate on specific ways to promote said policies. | 2 | ||
| Health Education | This first half of the course provides theoretical basis for understanding health-related behaviors and designing health educational intervention programs at micro and macro levels. Through in-class discussion, students will critically read a presumed view of human and society, strength, and limitations of each theory. The latter half of the course applies theories to real settings in workplace, community, healthcare settings, and school. | 2 | ||
| Health Sociology | The course provides a showcase of sociological theories of health and medicine, to encourage students to critically consider roles and meanings of health, illness, and medical/public health activities in societal context. | 2 | ||
| Health Promotion Science | In this subject, students learn and develop analytical and evaluation skills by collecting social and physical information on community and work-site health issues and by examining case studies. Students subsequently develop the skills to plan effective programs addressing health issues in small-group debates. Specific areas covered include: planning, implementation and evaluation of health promotion programs for life-style related disease and behavioral modification; basic theory of behavioral science; individual and population approaches; and various models used to create supportive environments. | 2 | ||
| Biomedical Ethics I | Students consider ethical & philosophical approaches which form the basis of ethical judgments in public health policymaking as well as clinical practice. Areas covered include: introduction to biomedical ethics & history; political philosophy; allocation of medical resources; and informed consent. These topics are addressed in lectures and small-group debates. | 2 | ||
| Biomedical Ethics II | This subject expands upon the topics covered in ‘Biomedical Ethics I’. Students read and interpret important literature in the fields of law & morality, rights theory, confidentiality, medical futility, and meta-ethics. | 2 | ||
| Society and Health I | This lecture series provides a broader context of social determinants of health (SDH) including education, poverty, social isolation, living arrangements, social networks, income inequality, and social capital. Currently available theoretical and empirical evidence on SDH will be reviewed and its strengths and challenges will be discussed. | 2 | ||
| Society and Health II | This course expands the discussions in Society and Health I to more practical and political contexts. Course activities include case-oriented discussions, students’ group-based presentations on 5 topics on health equity issues and a health impact assessment workshop. | 2 | ||
| Theory and practice of occupational health | This class provides updated information of recent trends and global perspectives in occupational health. Also students learn basis of practical skills to pursue occupational health activities at workplace, through case studies and exercises. | 2 | ||
| Human Resource Development for Health
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Participants will be able to learn human resource development for health (health professional education) based on principles related with education and learning through plenary and small group discussion. | 2 | ||
| Assessment in Health Professional Education | In human resource development for health areas, participants will be able to learn learner assessment, which is closely related with licensing and mastery of learning contents, including principles of statistics and psychometrics. | 2 | ||
| Health Policy | Using several cases related to healthcare policymaking & management, such as prevention and health promotion, access to healthcare, health insurance reimbursement systems, and health policy-making process, this subject provides students with a systematic understanding of various stakeholder perspectives, relevant social systems, funds procurement, and their management. | 2 | ||
| Healthcare Informatics | This subject consists of lectures on healthcare data management, data coding & classification, information technology basics & standardization, data processing techniques, healthcare information system & network technology basics and operation, healthcare information protection & security, and healthcare information system management etc. | 2 | ||
| Healthcare Informatics Exercise | The exercise covers practical healthcare data management & data coding techniques, data processing techniques, and healthcare information system design & management techniques, based on actual hospital information systems. | 1 | ||
| Public health informatics | Students learn the basics of public health informatics. To that end, the subject focuses on geographical information system, infection surveillance system and disease registration system associated information processing techniques. | 2 | ||
| Public health informatics
Exercise |
In this exercise, students learn about practical public health information engineering through case studies on geographical information system using R. | 1 | ||
| Forensic Medicine & Medical Law | This subject comprises lectures and debates focusing on the legal & social contexts of abnormal fatalities, particularly cases/precedents of death related to medical care. In addition to participating in an actual autopsy, postmortem examination & evaluation, students visit the law courts and engage in debates. | 2 | ||
| Forensic Medicine & Medical Law Exercise | In this exercise, students analyze the issues relating to coroner’s inquest methods & systems in Japan and overseas through surveys of the deceased’s relatives and physicians, literature searches, and fieldwork etc., and propose new methods and systems. The exercise also leverages the lecturer’s practical experience on the Ministry of Health Labour & Welfare’s ‘Model Project on Inquests into Medical Care-related Deaths’ with a role play assuming the roles of inquest personnel (nurses, physicians & coordinators) and education supervisors. | 2 | ||
| Medical Safety Management | In this subject, students become acquainted with actual medical safety management by investigating risk factors related to potential incidents & medical accidents in clinical practice, and engaging in practical debates on the development of systems for the promotion of medical safety as well as responses to medical accidents and past medical malpractice suits. | 1 | ||
| Medical Safety Management Exercise | Students acquire practical analytical & policy planning skills by gathering & analyzing materials from actual healthcare facilities relating to potential incidents in clinical practice, development of systems for the promotion of medical safety, and responses to medical accidents. | 0.5 | ||
| Public Health Preparedness | This subject teaches students the basics of responding to health risk outbreaks through case studies of typical past cases on: field epidemiological survey methods to deal with health risks such as a new type of influenza, SARS, and bioterrorism; public health surveillance; identification of the causes of disease outbreaks; and planning, implementation & assessment of countermeasures. | 1 | ||
| Health Administration & Public Health Preparedness Exercise | In this exercise, students learn planning, implementation and evaluation of actual countermeasures against various diseases, organizational and preparedness management in public health practice, and the roles of the public health officers, by visiting actual health administration environments. | 2 | ||
| Environmental Health | Humans ingest various toxic substances from the environment including air, water, and food. This subject provides students with basic knowledge and concepts relating to identification of the biological effects of these hazardous substances, dose-response relationships, the pathological mechanisms by which harmful effects are manifested and biomarkers for initial diagnosis of their effects, and environmental defense measures. | 1 | ||
| Advanced Public Health Theory | This subject enables students to better understand the nature of health science contributing to public welfare, as well as the accompanying research & practical issues which need to be overcome, by addressing specific approaches and challenges from each of the School of Public Health’s 13 research fields which constitute a contact point between public policy & activity. | 2 | ||
| Internship | Students attend public health facilities (public health research & testing facilities, think tanks, NPOs, healthcare facilities etc.) and leverage their subsequent practical experiences to develop skills in identifying personal initiatives, conducting analysis, and planning measures/policies. | 2 | ||
| Themed Research | Under the guidance of their research supervisor, students acquire advanced problem-solving capabilities through practical tasks such as fieldwork, data collection, analysis, statistical analysis and essay writing on a particular research theme. | 6 | ||