Doctoral Programmes in Public Health and Social Science (DPPHSS)

Newly emerging problems of public health are more complex, difficult and require multidisciplinary approaches for their identification, design and implementations of intervention programs. Most important problems of population health, such as cancer cardiovascular diseases, diabetes have multifactor etiology. Main health risks shifted from mainly social and behavioral spheres. Nowadays social determinants of health constitute about 50% of known risk factors. On the other hand, social services aim at improving social aspects of population, such as education, housing, healthcare, job training, etc. Today it is impossible to talk about improving public health indicators and organization of public health activities without consideration of social services component. Modern risks assessment methodologies, development strategies and implementation of interventions require highly qualified staff, adequate and timely research and multidisciplinary team, consisting of core specialists in public health, social workers and psychologists. European model of public health is more social driven rather than medical driven. 

Overall, the goal of this project is to design and develop a PhD program, aiming at advancing knowledge, research and analytical skills in public health in general, as well as strongly interconnected with social sciences. The project will support modernization of health and social services in Armenia and Georgia through the development of postgraduate program, targeting training of highly specialized professionals in the field, able to assess needs, develop programs and carry out activities in public health and social sciences. Multiple complementary modules will be created which can be combined in different combinations. The project duration is three years.

The proposed project complies with the overall aims of the capacity building projects, aiming at modernization of HE in partner countries, improving the level of competitivness of universities both in national and international level.

There are several components of the project that are new and innovative for higher education in all partner countries:

1. The whole idea of creating an interconnected postgraduate research program in Public Health and Social Sciences is itself new for easter partnership countries. To this date no academic institution has used a method of cross-teaching as a method of training of specialists at the crossroads of multiple disciplines. This approach allows not only provides quality education to future professionals in public health and social sciences, but also establishes a network of professionals that can catalyze development of Public Health and Social Sciences further.
2. There are no e-learning components or online resources available for PhD students in partner universities, thus blended learning is not incorporated in postgraduate education. Hence, developing online education resources will be one of the biggest and innovative contributions of this project. Within the framework of this project these important components of education advancement will be developed and implemented.

As a long term impact, project will help to increase compeptitivnes of involved universityes in the global educational arena, will contribute to better health care and social services provision in country, improve health and social services management and increase career perspectives and job opportunities for prospective graduates.

List of partners:

• Babes-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, The Center for Health Policy and Public Health (Romania)
• Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Georgia)
• Sakvarelidze National Center for Disease Control and Public Health (Georgia)
• Minsitry of Educaiton, Science, Culture and Sport of Georgia (Georgia)
• Minsitry of Education (Armenia)
• National Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Armenia)
• National Institute of Labour and Social Research (Armenia)
• Slovak Medical University, Faculty of Public Health (Slovakia)
• The Unviesity of Georgia (Georgia)
• University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria (Austria)
• University of Gothenburg, Health Metric Unit, Division of Public Health, Institute of Medicine (Sweden)
• Yerevan State Medical University after M. Heratsi (Armenia)
• Yerevan State University, Deparment of Social Work and Social Technologies (Armenia)