Graduate Diploma in Health Policy

• Course overview
• Course content
• Course structure
• How to apply
• Enrolment information
• Coursework fees
• Units of study
• Scholarships and Prizes

The Graduate Diploma in Health Policy (GradDipHlthPol) offers a critical perspective on how our health care system operates. It emphasizes the importance of power and value choices, focusing on the interaction of governments with the private and community sectors in shaping policy. The Graduate Diploma pays particular attention to the global forces that are challenging all societies – rich and poor. Students will also widen their studies by choosing from elective units covering bioethics and law, health research methods, policy analysis, public finance, security studies and tobacco control.

The Graduate Diploma in Health Policy is a unique program that will extend the professional skills of students, enabling them to become health policy leaders. By the end of the course students will understand the forces shaping the health policy environment, work with professional confidence across the health sector and become familiar with national and international health policy networks. You will learn how to develop and implement health policy through the analysis and application of knowledge to current policy issues. Students will learn how to develop and implement health policy through the application of knowledge to health policy issues and analysis of current health policy directions, in Australia and globally.

The health policy curriculum has been designed especially to suit:

• Those people who are currently working in policy and wish to extend their knowledge and skills in the health sector;
• Health care practitioners who wish to develop policy skills for current or future work;
• Recent graduates with science, medical science or social science degrees who wish to pursue a career in health policy;
• Managers working in health related sectors – public and private; and
• Those with existing technical backgrounds, including clinical managers, seeking higher levels of knowledge of the health policy process.

The Graduate Diploma in Health Policy includes units of study that cover health policy history and practice, policy analysis, the organisation of health care systems, global health policy, and applied skills in health policy. The course has a strong orientation towards contemporary policy learning, with an emphasis on linking policy and practice. It takes a strongly comparative focus – looking at international trends in policy development and the influence of global forces in shaping policy problems and solutions.

The Graduate Certificate in Health Policy will use case studies and problem based learning in a global analysis of health policy. Students will engage in a dynamic debate and exchange of ideas in response to evidence from cutting-edge research.

Students will develop an understanding of: the political and economic context of policy development; the issues and links between knowledge and evidence and policy and planning; and current and emerging health policy issues. Graduate Diploma students are able to broaden their skills by choosing from a broad array of electives offered in related disciplines.

The GradDipHlthPol is a one-year full-time or part-time course. You are required to complete all 5 compulsory units of study and one elective unit of study (totalling 36 credit points) in order to satisfy the course regulations. Students will attend day workshops and participate in online discussions, making the course suitable for people living outside the Sydney metropolitan area.

The table below summarises the course structure and requirements for the Graduate Diploma in Health Policy:

*Choose one elective unit of study from the following:

• how to apply
• enrolment information
• coursework fees
• units of study
• Scholarships and Prizes