The PhD in Public Health Sciences is mostly directed to young candidates whose interest is to develop research on international topics including clinical and epidemiological settings. To facilitate a multidisciplinary approach, the PhD in Public Health Sciences is open to young graduates belonging not only in the medical and health-care fields but also in other scientific fields, such as Biology, Biotechnology, Veterinary medicine, Statistics, Sociology, and Economics.

The PhD in Public Health Sciences aims to train researchers in designing, conducting, and critically interpreting research projects. In addition, researchers will be able to evaluate health status at the population level and eventually prevent the occurrence of transmittable and chronic-degenerative diseases; to promote individual and community health; to disseminate scientific results and relevant research methodologies.

Specific aims

1. Develop research methodologies in Public Health at every levels: from laboratory to clinical practice; to develop prevention strategies for general population or subgroups exposed to particular risk factors (occupation, geographical area, fragility, and socio-economic status); to develop methodologies in a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary setting to identify the healthy link among populations, animals and environment (one health approach).
2. Gain methodological knowledge for developing new methods and critically interpreting the results from basic, clinical, healthcare and epidemiological research.

 

Educational strategies

1. Gain work abilities in interdisciplinary groups for integrating the competences in risk assessment and risk management processes and in the impact evaluation (either in public health field or in environment field).
2. Gain abilities to define and evaluate healthcare policies aimed at the health service management of both healthcare and health improvement with a particular focus for population subgroups with a higher risk
3. Gain epidemiologic and statistical methodologies to conduct clinical and healthcare researches. They also require knowledge in toxicological, biotechnological, environmental socio-economical, and psycho-social sciences.
4. Gain knowledge in economic analysis of health service management. In particular, the evaluation of the factors (i.e., quality and efficiency of the services, equity and sustainability) that influence the health-care system costs.
5. Develop models using data from different available sources (i.e., institutional data) to identify health determinants in the general population. health In this case lots of data from different sources is available.

 

Elements of evaluation

The candidate is asked to publish at least three papers on indexed and peer reviewed journals, (one of them as a first author) and the PhD thesis within the three years PhD course.

The aim of the PhD in Public Health Sciences is to train young graduates not only with young the biological-clinical background but also with economic, social, statistical, veterinary, demographical background. In order to create synergies among them for developing and validating study methodologies and health-care data analysis in national and international cooperation projects.

The PhD internationalization process contemplates student and Professor exchanges with other PhD courses, foreign institutions and the organization of courses by foreign experts. From that point of view the aim of the PhD in Public Health Sciences is to integrate PhD students in international cooperation projects in a Global Health vision as well as to create synergies with national institutions that have research tasks orientated towards Public Health.

Professional careers are Management of the National Health Service structures, governmental and international health organizations, pharmaceutical companies, Oncological Research Centres, in addition to the Academy and Hospital divisions that require toxicological, public health and bio-statistical competences.