MEDICAL AND HEALTH PROGRAM SEPTEMBER

Es evidente que la comunicación entre todos los agentes implicados en la gestión de la salud es un área de trabajo e investigación imprescindible en la actualidad. En este curso se pretende presentar los aspectos técnicos y sociales de la comunicación en el ámbito sanitario, analizar el papel de la comunicación en la prevención de la enfermedad y en el bienestar de la población y estudiar la influencia de diversidades socioculturales, educativas, políticas o económicas en el diseño, aplicación y resultados de los programas de salud.

Health Communication is an emerging field in which professional communicators inform, influence and motivate individual, institutional and public audiences about important health issues. This course examines the importance of how health information affects individuals, community groups, institutions and public policy. We will be focusing on the study of language and discourse about health between health care providers and patients, among health care professionals, and among members of the larger society and the media. We will discuss the influence of social, cultural and linguistic barriers on health communication, and the consequences of linguistic choices made by communicators on individual beliefs and behaviours relating to health. The field includes the study of strategic communication of evidence-based health information to professional and non- professional audiences. It also reviews strategies of persuasion, the relationship between attitudes and behaviour and the changing nature of health and health delivery, and evaluates successful and unsuccessful health information campaings.

The human genome sequence forms the cornerstone of contemporary human genetics. This course will cover hereditary and molecular genetics as it applies to humans, with a strong genomics and human disease perspective. It will cover transmission genetics, the Human Genome Project, Identification of human disease genes, modern technologies for genome analysis, personal genomics and cancer genomics. We will also discuss current topics such as genetic testing.

The advances in Cellular and Molecular Biology has enriched our understanding of physiological mechanisms as well as the bases of pathophysiology processes, which has allowed to improve diagnostic tools and therapeutic approaches. The steps forwards in these fields have also generated a high degree of confusion regarding terminology and concepts. In this course we will present to the students 15 clinical cases that will permit them to investigate both individually and collaboratively through electronic databases many new concepts. Collected information will be shared and used to interpret proposed question on cellular and molecular mechanisms of the diseases involved in order to reach under the teacher supervision a final overview of the whole situation. In addition, three practical problems that will developed in six sessions will help the students to get in contact with the real activity in the clinical laboratory.

Bioethics is the application of ethics to the field of medicine and healthcare. Bioethics is a multidisciplinary discipline, which blends philosophy, theology, history, and law with medicine, nursing, health policy, and medical humanities. It is a relatively recent discipline, at least as it is currently known. In this course, we will discuss topics such as What is bioethics?, Ethical Approaches, The beginning of life, Bodies and bodily parts, Information problems, The end of life, Global health-care issues, Research ethics, Health systems and institutions and Teaching and practice of bioethics.