An Introduction to Ecological Health

WHAT IS THIS PROGRAMME?

The purpose of this online learning course is to support community leaders, organisers and everyday folx to work towards understanding how health outcomes result from our interactions with the natural, built, social, economic and political environments around us.

    • To increase knowledge on health and how it is shaped by the habitats we live, work, and play in.

    • To develop a scientific understanding of health and its relation to stress caused by the urban experience.

    • To underpin advocacy work with a scientific and justice lens.

    • To understand how structural determinants around us from laws, policies, and regulations come together to create systems of ill-health.

    • To develop the skills to create a Community Health Impact Assessment for your people, by your people.

    • A curious learner interested in knowing more about health and the places they live

    • Anyone looking to develop a robust methodology to improve community health at the systemic level.

    • Community organisers and leaders looking for institutionally recognised tools and methods to incorporate lived experience knowledge into civic and policy action.

    • People and organisations looking to evaluate the impacts of a potential intervention, event, or policy change on a community.

    • People who are ready to commit time to learning.

    • You are organised in that there are members of your community that spend time observing, listening, engaging and advocating around the conditions that you are collectively experiencing.

    • Your community is facing ongoing or imminent challenges to your lived environment, for example property or infrastructure demolition or development, changes in land use and pollution, to name a few.

    • You are invested in baselining your community’s health to increase awareness and competence for future advocacy. You do not need to be in the midst of an active challenge to walk this process as it serves your community long term to have this evidence base.

    If you are not in an organised community, but are curious or wanting to begin this process, Modules 1 & 2 sets the scene and context of urban health and is a great start to understanding the terrain.

    Modules 3 & 4 are targeted at organised groups looking at analysing and acting on the systems around them.

    Feel free to go as far as is relevant to your learning and organising.

Course Details

English city with high street and tower block

What is Ecological Health

The module is split into 6 lessons plus a light exercise to wrap up. We hope through this module that you gain a solid foundation in seeing how different environments and systems, and their behaviours and designs, influence the broader conversation on health. We’ll cover topics such as pollution and biological stress as well as the role that data has in contextualising and communicating our health.

  • L1: What is Ecological Health?
  • L2: Stress, Pollution & Health
  • L3: Defining Community Health
  • L4: Health & Our Environments
  • L5: Data & Community Health
  • L6: Medicine, Science, and Health
  • L7: Working with a Community
Polluting factory chimneys

Pathways to Health Injustice

This module is for people who are interested in building on what they’ve learned in module 1, adding depth and to learnings about variability in experiences and thus health outcomes. This module covers issues of injustice, racism, trauma, gender discrimination, and PTSD.

  • L1: Understanding Susceptibility
  • L2: Structural Violence
  • L3: Gender & Health
  • L4: Race, Racialisation, Racism and Health
  • L5: Introducing Environmental Injustice
  • L6: The Planetary Dysregulation
Man deliverying items to building

The Determinants of Health

This module focuses on how to explore the ways in which structural determinants influence the impact of a health related policy or intervention. In this module we focus on systems analysis to support your ability to challenge what you see at face value and build robust plans that consider a wide range of externalities.

  • L1: What are the 3 fields of the Determinants of Health?
  • L2: Critiquing the Social Determinants of Health
  • L3: Translating determinants into health risks
  • L4: Module wrap-up and exercise
Two women reviewing documents and a map

Community Health Impact Assessments

This module is designed to support community leaders, organisers and everyday folx work towards producing a Community Health Impact Assessment. This module is focused on how you organise, asset and network map, develop a theory of change, and work alongside your community’s leaders and organisations.

  • L1: Case Studies of CHIAs
  • L2: Having Indifference to the System
  • L3: Some important reading
  • L4: Mapping Your Ecosystem
  • L5: Building a Theory of Change
  • L4: Creating a Community Health Impact Assessment

What some previous course participants have said

“The course was like a mini masters: the resources superb and the learning so wide ranging”

“The way that learning was linked to opportunities to put learning into practice and real case studies was brilliant”

“I was able to think about the impact of culture and superdiversity on health”

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