Undergraduate Course: REALITIES in Health Disparities (EFIE10004)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Under the backdrop of pervasive health inequalities, we invite you to radically re-imagine public health and other systems (families, communities, governments) to tackle inequity. Within this collaborative, experiential and embodied learning journey, you will engage creatively with cultural, natural, scientific, political, artistic and social elements of our existence (on this planet, at this time). How can we support new imaginaries of health in systems currently 'felt' to be broken? |
| Course description |
This course will equip students with relational systems-level thinking that supports fresh understandings and imaginaries of systems related to health, wellbeing and equity. It will contribute to theoretical and practical transdisciplinary understandings and applications of how individuals connect and relate to the systems around them - invaluable learning for research projects, practices, communities and individual lives.
The course is informed by an ongoing and growing UK Research and Innovation research-practice-policy partnership REALITIES consortium and Human Learning Systems. Students will become part of our transdisciplinary collective of individuals with lived and felt experience of inequalities working alongside policymakers; local authorities; charities; artists; environmentalists and researchers from policy; health humanities; arts; psychology; human geography; environmental sociology; dentistry; medicine; statistics; economics; counselling; psychotherapy; management; medical anthropology; design and innovation.
Weekly theory-to-practice sessions will be followed by creative, collaborative activities. Students will present their vision(s) to their fellow learners as part of a collective understanding of their 'ecosystem'. For example, they may explore creative ways to challenge how we understand 'data' and what forms of 'data' are used to leverage different motivations and interests within our social systems related to health and wellbeing. The early weeks of the course will begin inductively by collating individual and collective understandings of what we mean by a social system within the group, followed by creative exercises to produce rudimentary, initial imaginations of what systems may look like in the year 2050. The next weeks will take these initial imaginaries and build on them by introducing more theory and examples of the systems we are already re-imagining in our UKRI funded REALITIES consortium.
Students will learn from the 16 other UKRI projects being funded by the mobilising community assets programme, and global examples of re-imagining systems. From here on in, lectures will focus on the cultural, the social, the ecological and the political to address issues around the notion of place, people, processes, power, price and purpose. This will result in co-created projects engaging with aspects of systems and a final collective presentation of each project to attempt to connect this pollination of imaginaries into a fresh re-imagined system.
We will ask students to engage with weekly readings that include academic literature, but also multi-disciplinary literature and media to guide the learning journey. There will be mini assessments throughout the course to ensure understanding of the readings and topics developed within the classes. The course develops students' understandings of public health systems and their relational connectedness with wider social systems, questioning ontologies (realities) and epistemologies (knowledge) inherent within these systems, the role of power and the political, natural assets, the role of creativity in reimagining systems, situated culture and troubling the notion of place, ethics and process.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 36 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 30,
Formative Assessment Hours 3,
Summative Assessment Hours 6,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
157 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
We are all part of the REALITIES ecosystem on this course, so we create the re-imagined system together as part of the assessment process.
The course is a learning journey: we come up with ideas and we collaborate. Collaboration does not happen in silos. Assessments are relational and connected to classroom connections.
Formative Assessment:
The formative assessment is a proposed idea of a reimagined system (peer assessed) to offer an initial understanding of social systems connected to health wellbeing and the REALITIES model. It is enacted through groupwork and collaborative inquiry. The groups 'peer assess' each other through 300 - 500 words or another creative offering.
Summative Assessment:
The course will be assessed by means of the following components:
1) Group Presentation
A group presentation of students' re-imagined system(s) that are assessed (15 minutes drawing from a range of methodologies and approaches). Students pick which ontological and epistemological approach is fitting for their offer.
2) Individual Reflective Assignment
(2500 words or another creative offering)
This is a reflective piece of work of the learning experience in the formative and summative assessments, connecting the individual to 'the system'. Through this reflection, students will reflect on what work is needed to enable places to reimagine and build 'systems' (internal and external) that create equitable health and wellbeing using REALITIES in Health Disparities course as an ecosystem.
Questions guiding this inquiry include:
- How did you 'present' yourself or 'show up' in your system?
- What blockages (barriers) emerged when collaborating and when doing individual work?
- How did you/'the system' work round these barriers or blockages?
- What were the enablers that 'unblocked' parts of the system?
Individual and collective assessments are included to ensure that each person's disposition is respected both towards more deep, reflective work and collaborative, relational work. |
| Feedback |
Detailed feedback will be offered on the formative assessment of the plan for a re-imagined system (both from peers and the tutors/course leader(s).
For the summative assessments, detailed and critical feedback will be offered by the tutor/course leader. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate a critical understanding of current systems-level theories, concepts and principles of transdisciplinary, participatory research.
- Understand what work is needed to enable places to reimagine and build 'systems' that create equitable health and wellbeing.
- Critically identify, define, conceptualise and analyse complex problems and issues as related to health and/or social care disparities.
- Explore and explain how links between creativity, relationships and nature create healthier and more resilient communities and environments for people in deprived areas.
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Reading List
Essential Reading:
Batalden, M., Batalden, P., Margolis, P., Seid, M., Armstrong, G., Opipari-Arrigan, L., & Hartung, H. (2016). Coproduction of healthcare service. BMJ Quality & Safety, 25(7), 509-517. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjqs-2015-004315
de Andrade, M (2022). Public Health, Humanities and Magical Realism: A Creative-Relational Approach to Researching Human Experience. Abingdon: Routledge.
de Andrade, M. (2024). REALITIES in health disparities: Researching Evidence-based Alternatives in Living, Imaginative, Traumatised, Integrated, Embodied Systems. Frontiers in Public Health, 12, 1391084-.
de Andrade, M., & Angelova, N. (2020). Evaluating and evidencing asset-based approaches and co-production in health inequalities: measuring the unmeasurable? Critical Public Health, 30(2), 232-244.
Denzin, Norman K and Yvonna S Lincoln (Eds) (2011) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 4th Edition. Sage Publications. Selected chapters.
Hurwitz et al. (eds) (2004) Narrative research in health and illness. Malden: BMJ Books
Eriksen, H., Rautio, A., Johnson, R., Koepke, C., & Rink, E. (2021). Ethical considerations for community-based participatory research with Sami communities in North Finland. Ambio, 50(6), 1222-1236.
Gordon-Bouvier, E. (2020). Relational vulnerability : theory, law and the private family (1st ed. 2020.). Palgrave Macmillan.
Knowles, J. G. and Cole, A. L. (2008) Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research. London: Sage
Leavy, P. (2015) Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice. New York: Guildford Press (2nd edition)
Lowe, T., French, M., Hawkins, M., Hesselgreaves, H., & Wilson, R. (2020). New development: Responding to complexity in public service: the human learning systems approach. Public Money & Management, 41(7), 573-576.
Treisman, K. (2021). A treasure box for creating trauma-informed organizations: A ready-to-use resource for trauma, adversity, and culturally informed, infused and responsive systems. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Zebracki, M., Diamand, E., & Greatrick, A. (2024). Creative writing as critical fieldwork methodology. Qualitative Research, 0(0).
Mannay, D. (2016). Visual, narrative and creative research methods: application, reflection and ethics. London: Routledge
Guattari, F. (2005). The three ecologies. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Recommended Reading:
Flicker, S., & Worthington, C. A. (2012). Public Health Research Involving Aboriginal Peoples: Research Ethics Board Stakeholders' Reflections on Ethics Principles and Research Processes. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 103(1), 19-22.
Lasczik, A., Rousell, D., Irwin, R. L., Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, A., & Lee, N. (2022). Walking with a/r/tography: An orientation. In A. Lasczik, D. Rousell, & R. L. Irwin (Eds.), Walking with A/r/tography (pp. 1-15). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Suffern, C. J. (2024). 'You Are against UK Law': Clean Break Theatre Company's Carceral Dramaturgy. Modern Drama, 67(2), 151-173.
Tsing, A.L., 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Transdisciplinary,Participatory,Creative Methods,Health Disparities |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Marisa De Andrade
Tel: (0131 6)51 5554
Email: marisa.deandrade@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr Matt Bryant
Tel:
Email: Matt.Bryant@ed.ac.uk |
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