Hello and welcome to the course!  I’m Dr. Brian Hyndman, and it’s my privilege to serve as your instructor for this course.  I am a PhD graduate from the School of Public Health and Health Systems here at the University of Waterloo. You can find out more about me in the ‘about the author’ page in the syllabus. I’ll also be posting later this week in the ‘introduce yourself’ discussion topic.  I look forward to reading more about your own background and experiences, and I look forward to becoming better acquainted with all of you this term.

I want to ensure that this course provides you with both a useful and positive learning experience, so please feel free to contact me via LEARN or email if you have any questions or concerns about any aspect of the course. I check my UW email account daily, and I promise to respond to any student emails within 24 hours.

As noted in the course description in your syllabus, this course was designed to provide you with a comprehensive overview of the most commonly used population health interventions to promote health and prevent chronic diseases. Those of you who intend to work in organizations with a prevention mandate — such as a local public health unit, a community health centre, or a health-related non-governmental organization — may find this course to be especially relevant as it demonstrates how population-level disease prevention and health promotion programs are actually planned, implemented, and evaluated in the quote-unquote ‘real world’.

As you read the syllabus, you’ll notice another unique feature of this course. Unlike some of the other MPH courses you may have taken, there are no graded tests or essays. Instead, most of your grade will be based on your development of a hypothetical plan to take action on a risk factor or risk condition contributing to chronic diseases at the population level. Public health practitioners who work in organizations such as health units are often required to develop these sorts of plans as part of their job.  The assignment details are a bit complex, so please take the time to carefully review the requirements in the syllabus as well as the introductory course module and let me know if you have any questions.

The last thing I want to emphasize before I sign off is that I encourage all students to maintain an active presence in the weekly discussions forum.  Although participation in these forums is only worth a small portion of your final grade, I find that students who read the discussion threads and post their thoughts on a regular basis gain more knowledge from the course. Population health issues are going on around us as I speak, and I’ll be drawing on current population health-related events as discussion forum topics. So by taking part in the forums, you’ll gain a better sense of how the theories, concepts and strategies you’ll be learning in the course can be applied to address current, ‘real world’ population health problems. You’ll also get the benefit of the collective wisdom and experience of your fellow learners, many of whom are actively involved in public health practice.

So with that, I’ll leave you to explore the remainder of module 1. Enjoy!