Public Health Nutrition MSc

Course overview

The Public Health Nutrition MSc is designed to give you the opportunity to consider public health nutrition dilemmas by leading a culture that engages a shared responsibility for health.

This course aims to ensure graduates have the knowledge and skills to enable them to work in public health nutrition.

• It aims to provide you with foundational skills and knowledge across the three pillars of public health: prevention, protection, and promotion, as well as underpinning knowledge of nutrition science and metabolism, disease prevention and the wider determinants of health.
• The course brings together the science of nutrition, consultancy and creativity to expand your horizons beyond the more traditional approaches to public health nutrition.
• It aims to equip you with the confidence and skills to become entrepreneurs within the highly competitive nutrition sector.

Why you should study this course

• The Public Health Nutrition MSc aims to equip you to consider public health nutrition dilemmas by leading a culture that engages a shared responsibility for health, developing organised efforts to promote and maintain nutrition-related health / wellbeing and encouraging the informed choices of society.
• The course journey focuses on methods to assess the health needs of populations, deliver disease prevention programmes, design health interventions, behaviour change techniques and disseminate evidence-based public health nutrition information through a variety of media, communications, creative thinking and leadership strategies.
• You will have the opportunity to develop health promotion campaigns and projects as part of the course.
• Develop organised efforts to promote and maintain nutrition-related health and wellbeing.
• The changes within the public sector mean that it is important that students are made aware of and appreciate the opportunities available to them in the private sector and the value of their transferable skills. This is addressed through the development of their own business plan and through the CMI module. Upon successful completion of this module, you can also gain a postgraduate Certificate in Strategic Management and Leadership Practice.

Careers and opportunities

On successful completion of the course a student will be able to:

• Critically understand the underpinning science of nutrition and its application to promote health behaviour change in populations and groups.
• Use knowledge of food and nutrition, epidemiology and disease risk to critically analyse and interpret community or population nutrition needs and to evaluate how this relates to public health nutrition policy and practice.
• Comprehend public health research and policy in order to critically appraise and evaluate the research or policy considering rigour, generalisability, theoretical concerns, and practical issues.
• Self-reflect regarding professional development and be aware of legal and ethical obligations involved in practising as a public health nutritionist.
• Critically consider global health issues and evaluate the importance of cultural sensitivity and sustainability within public health settings and other professional contexts.
• Critically evaluate the principles for leading and developing people and a culture of organisational health and wellbeing.
• Integrate knowledge and understanding from the disciplines of public health, nutrition, and psychology of behaviour change to identify or propose solutions through research, creative media, public health and commercial outputs.
• Justify choice of research design and methods to investigate (under supervision) a research question or hypothesis of relevance to public health nutrition and present this in a way that would stand up to critical review and scrutiny in academic and professional settings.

Public health nutrition graduates may work in a variety of settings to improve or enhance public health through the prevention and secondary prevention of nutrition and diet-related diseases.

Government and local government, health authorities and hospitals, charities and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) all employ public health nutritionists. The food industry, including manufacturers and retailers, utilises public health nutritionists to facilitate social responsibility or to gain a competitive advantage through using nutrition as a unique selling point. Successful completion of this Public Health Nutrition course could also act as a launchpad for further academic study including PhD.