Overview

This MSc provides rigorous training in demography and population studies. The curriculum comprises demographic methods and theory, epidemiology, statistics and data analysis.

Many of our societies continue to face a diverse set of demographic challenges and opportunities, including rapid population ageing, extremely low as well as very high fertility, and sizable population migration. These and other demographic trends have important repercussions in all possible domains of life; from voting behavior to living arrangements, labour markets and economic growth, tax revenues and pension systems, carbon emissions, and the demand for education, health and social services. Demography, in other words, may well be the single most defining factor of the world that we live in.

The MSc Demography & Health equips students with the theories and skills to understand and quantify macro-level population dynamics and their downstream implications for health and health policies. Students are further trained in the analysis of micro-level processes that govern population change, including fertility and reproductive behaviour, the exposure to health risks, and population mobility. Analysis tools and techniques are applied to high-income settings where high-quality data are usually abundant to resource constrained settings that are covered by partial or deficient information systems.

The teaching programme gives students ample opportunity to select from a wide range of modules in statistics, epidemiology public health, and the social sciences, and thus tailor their curriculum to either focus on the technical aspects of data analytics and demographic estimation, or, take a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of population and health.

The MSc Demography & Health is recognised by the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Population Investigation Committee (PIC) and a number of scholarships from these bodies are available each year.

Why study the MSc Demography & Health at LSHTM?

Learn demography within the wider context of public health in a world-leading specialised institution
Tailor your degree to meet your needs thanks to the modular structure of the programme
Gain practical skills through student-led seminars, data analysis tasks or mini-research projects
Specialise and apply your learning with the MSc research project
Learn to formulate research questions and use bio statistical data and analysis to address them
Assess population studies and apply your research findings to policy, backed by sound knowledge
Learn to present results of bio statistical analyses through written and oral presentations
Understand population trends in low-, middle- and high-income countries
Choose to focus on the technical aspects of data analytics and estimation, or, take a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of population and health.

Objectives

By the end of this programme students should be able to:

• demonstrate advanced knowledge and understanding of scientific, evidence-based approaches to the study of population issues
• assess and apply these approaches to inform development, health and population programmes
• formulate research questions and use demographic and health data, and appropriate methods of analysis, to address them
• identify causes and consequences of population change and relate these to underlying population dynamics.