Environmental Health

Our MSc Environmental Health course is designed specifically to enable health professionals to develop expertise in environmental health issues, and is aimed at graduates keen to acquire the professional skills associated with identifying, assessing, evaluating and controlling environmental factors that affect health. It educates and supports anyone pursuing public or private sector careers that promote and protect human health and welfare. Employability is excellent, thanks to strong links with and direct teaching input from employers across the South West.

The majority of our students go straight into related employment. With many securing positions before graduation, with employers such as national food and health, safety and environment organisations and consultancies, national retailers and the leisure/holiday sector, as well as local councils, or overseas with a growing international focus on environmental health issues. This is reflected in our increasing number of international applicants.

On completing the course, the professional practical training and assessment set by the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH), you'll be eligible for registration with the Environmental Health Registration Board, CIEH, and will be able to enter into practice as an Environmental Health Practitioner. You'll have the knowledge and experience in decision-making needed to identify and tackle environmental health issues in a wide range of contexts. You'll also be ready to contribute significantly to existing environmental health practice, and to respond to and initiate change in line with current and emerging public health issues.

The faculty also provides an integrated Professional Development (Environmental Health) course for those seeking professional training.

Studies focus on key current environmental health concerns, and cover public health, food safety, housing, health and safety at work, and pollution management. The core modules are:

• Environmental Health Principles and Practice - A critical understanding of environmental health legal systems, risk assessment, employability skills and how they apply in practice through field visits, and input from experienced practitioners and employers.
• Food Control - Developing an understanding of food safety situations along with the skills needed to assess and control them effectively. This is through a combination of teaching and practical sessions.
• Pollution Management - Learning to understand, evaluate and mitigate aspects and processes of human activity that can cause environmental contamination of air (including noise), water and land.
• Health and Safety Management - How working environments can affect our health, safety and welfare and how we can minimise incidence and negative effects through target-based interventions. 
• Housing - Looking closely at the relationship between housing, communities and health, and the risks associated with housing deficiencies.
• Introduction to Public Health - Learning how to critically analyse what determines health and illness in social, environmental and political contexts.
• Health Promotion - Evaluating approaches to tackling health inequalities within communities.
• Quantitative Health Research - Critical analysis and interpretation of epidemiological studies, in preparation for the research aspect of the course dissertation.
• Dissertation - Design and execute a planned research study based on relevant methodology within an appropriate research framework.

Entry is open to those who:

• hold a first degree (minimum 2:2 honours) in a science based discipline; or
• hold a first degree (minimum 2:2 honours) in another discipline and can demonstrate that they have attained equivalent to the science foundation necessary for the programme in such cases; or
• have other qualifications and/or experience considered to be equivalent by the Programme Manager.

Applicants will normally be interviewed and required to successfully complete an assessed piece of work.