Health and Wellbeing

Page contents

• Programme overview
• Entry requirements
• Staff research interests

Programme overview

The South West Doctoral Training Centre (SWDTC) Health and Wellbeing pathway enables students to cultivate a range of skills to develop and evaluate interventions and strategies to improve health behaviour. Your work will make a major impact on understandings of the social science underpinnings of avoidable health problems, and will build research capacity at the interface of biomedical and social sciences within and beyond academia.

Programme structure

Research training follows the South West Doctoral Training Centre (SWDTC) interdisciplinary format.

Core units

Three core research training units are selected from the consortium's offerings in research design, data collection and data analysis; there is one pathway specific unit; and two units will be selected from an open unit list.

• Advanced Interdisciplinary Research Design

The core research training units include this new mandatory unit. It addresses the characteristics and challenges of 'doing' interdisciplinary research.

• Contemporary Debates in Lifestyle Behaviours and Public Health.

This pathway-specific unit is a customdesigned and co-convened core unit. It exposes students to a breadth of disciplinary enquiry, diverse theoretical perspectives, and a full range of constituent specialisms.

Optional units

A wide range of existing open units from all three universities will be made available for students to choose from. These include topic-specific units on issues such as physical activity, tobacco control and health policy, and translational units such as translating evidence into practice.

You will also undertake a research thesis.

Research groups

The pathway integrates the study of the interaction between three important lifestyle behaviours - nutrition, physical activity and substance use (ie smoking and alcohol consumption), and their impact on public health and risks for chronic diseases. For further information on some of our associated research groups and staff, please see the School for Policy Studies Research page.

Key research interests

All students have two supervisors from different disciplinary perspectives on Health and Wellbeing. Students proposing cross-institutional supervision are particularly encouraged. Your supervisors will convene joint meetings on a regular basis, and will attend the annual one-day workshop for all pathway students.

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Entry requirements

A Masters qualification (or equivalent) with appropriate research training.

For information on international equivalent qualifications, please see our International Office website.

Admissions statement

Read the programme admissions statement for important information on entry requirements, the application process and supporting documents required.

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Key research interests

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