In contemporary societies healthcare is a key social institute that addresses the issues of maintenance and improvement of citizens’ health. While population health is largely produced outside of healthcare settings themselves, the functioning of healthcare, including diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of illness, injury, and other impairments, is essential for people’s wellbeing. Yet, healthcare can be and often is insufficiently accessible, responsive, and efficient for different members of society. How can healthcare provision and society be bridged?
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Bridging healthcare and society
National Research Tomsk State UniversityAbout this Course
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National Research Tomsk State University
National Research Tomsk State University is the largest classical university in the Asian part of Russia. For over 140 years TSU has been training the scientific and managerial elite, based on the integration of academic process and fundamental scientific research. It is a renowned center of education, science, innovations and attraction for creative talents, a generator of advanced ideas, and a paragon of adherence to the best traditions of Russian higher education.
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
Introduction to the course “Bridging health care and society”
Module 1. Why bridging?
During the last two centuries modern medicine has gained the role of being a key social institution. Advances in science have enriched medical practice with evidence of the causes and consequences of different diseases and have provided algorithms for effective forms of treatment. Health care has evolved and made impressive gains in protecting the wellbeing of individuals and society.
Module 2. Bridging healthcare professionals and patients
Social roles of doctor and patient, as well as relations between them, are dramatically changing in contemporary societies in the context of rapid technological shifts and scientific advancements, the commercialization of medicine, and the introduction of the idea of wider public engagement in healthcare provision. During the second module of the course we will delve into these complexities in order to understand the perspectives of medical professionals and their patients, discrepancies between their mutual expectations, and ways through which trustful cooperation can be built. We will consider the key social science approaches to understanding doctors’ professional role and construction of authority. We will also investigate challenges to this authority that emerge in the context of contemporary transformations of medical institution. Particular attention will be paid to issues of patient choice and control in healthcare, and strategies through which patients approach medical services and establish trust in relations with healthcare professionals. Module 2 aims to delineate disjunctures between healthcare professionals and patients, and to offer possible ways to bridge perspectives of these two groups.
Module 3. Bridging healthcare services and population groups
Healthcare systems are established in many countries to ensure that individuals are able to obtain health services when illness strikes and that they have access to effective interventions to prevent or reduce risk of disease and disability. Yet, often we observe a disjuncture between healthcare and the population groups it is meant to serve, which results in problems with access to health care even where the necessary services are seemingly in place.
Module 4. Bridging public health and public
The notion of public health appears to be intrinsically connected to the public domain. Yet, it appears that with increasing scientification and professionalization of public health over the course of past decades a gap between public health and public has been widening, rather than the other way around. During the last module of this course we will explore the reasons for these developments. Over the course of these last decades, public health has, firstly, expanded considerably, now covering ‘everything from eating, drinking and exercise to sleep, sex and work and addressing lifestyle from before conception right into extreme old age’, in the words of Klasien Horstman. Secondly, public health is increasingly invested in scientifically-based prevention, assuming that evidence-based interventions will turn risk behavior into healthy behavior and framing public health problems, largely, as technical problems which have to be solved through scientific expertise. This module traces the evolution of public health approaches and the rise of contemporary disjunctures between these approaches and the public they target. We see that in daily life people have their own ideas of risk and safety, have to deal with multiple other issues (such as supporting their families and adhering to their notions of the leading a good life), and operate within their unique contexts at specific rhythms. Consequently, the public often does not respond to public health interventions as expected. This module explores ways to bring the public back into public health and bridge the disjunctures demonstrated.
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