Population Health Sciences and Education

The Division of Population Health Sciences and Education facilitates teaching and research in the areas of mental health,  community health sciences, epidemiology and a broad teaching agenda encompassing clinical and communication skill, statistics, psychology and sociology.

The Medical and Healthcare Education Centre aims to enhance teaching on a wide range of St George’s courses by developing advanced teaching methods through technology. More widely the division includes both clinical and non-clinical staff from a range of disciplines including: epidemiology, statistics, health informatics, sociology, psychology and general practice.

It emphases a culture of stimulation, support, enterprise and innovation in everything it does in order to ensure that St George’s students and business partners benefit from the latest technology and knowledge. Ultimately, it aims to ensure that University innovations are reaching medical and healthcare practice through excellent teaching and learning, and that students are provided with the best possible foundation for a successful career.

Research is conducted within the Population Health Research Centre.

Interests are largely related to public health such as lifecourse epidimelogy focusing on children and the elderly and preventive medicine for instance screening for sexually transmissible diseases and lifestyle modifications to reduce cardiovascular risk.

Successes over the past few years have included collaborative publications in the leading general interest journals Nature, the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA), The Lancet, the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Medicine, particularly in the areas of genetic epidemiology and cardiovascular epidemiology. The division has also developed ophthalmic epidemiology as a new niche specialty. It currently works as part of the MRC-HPA Centre for Environment and Health, in collaboration with Imperial College London and King's College London on health consequences of air pollution. The division will continue to maximize the productivity of past investments whilst striving to develop future research programmes.

Tutors and lecturers within the division teach undergraduate medical students on the 5-year MBBS, the 4-year MBBS courses and a range of other courses , as well as organising student placements for more than 170 general practices throughout London.

Associated research is conducted by conducted by the International Centre for Drug Policy (ICDP). The centre advises, develops and delivers high quality multi-professional international education programmes in the prevention and management of tobacco, alcohol and drug misuse. Read more about the ICDP's work.