Assessment of Epidemiology Courses in Health Management Undergraduate Education in Turkey

Abstract

Abstract
 
 Objective: In today’s ever-changing health sector, health managers need to focus on promoting the health of populations, therefore they need a specialized understanding of epidemiology, as a necessary requirement for population-based management. Epidemiology is acknowledged as an important component of health management undergraduate education, which provides the knowledge and skills that health managers use in their efforts to promote quality of health. This cross-sectional descriptive study aims to assess the extent to which epidemiology is conducted in health management undergraduate programs in Turkey.
 Material and Method: The current curricula of 75 health management undergraduate programs, listed on the Program Atlas of the Higher Education Council, are reviewed through universities' Information Package for National Qualifications Framework for Higher Education to profile the characteristics of epidemiology courses. Descriptive statistics was expressed as mean±standard deviation for continuous variables, frequency and percentage values were used for categorical variables.
 Findings: A total of 60 (80.0%) programs have epidemiology in their curricula, yet the characteristics of these courses, such as their core/elective status, the semesters they are conducted, the weekly contact hours and ECTS credits, and the topics covered in the syllabus vary across programs.
 Conclusion: The findings of this study reveal that there are variations regarding how epidemiology courses are conducted across health management undergraduate programs in Turkey. Apparently this poses a challenge against all efforts to ensure the uniformity of the minimum core competencies among all health management program graduates; and although the Health Management National Core Education Program has been a great starting point towards standardization, there are further steps to be taken to improve the health management undergraduate curricula in Turkey.