Undergraduate programme
The Community Medicine teaching programme extends over a period of four semesters (4th to 8th semester) during the third and fourth years of undergraduate training. The intended learning outcomes (ILOs) of the Community Medicine teaching programme are adopted to contribute to the graduate profile of the MBBS programme. The ILOs are also inline with the WHO Guidelines for Community Medicine in the Undergraduate Medical Education (2011).
Mission
To contribute to the development of a holistic medical professional, who will demonstrate knowledge and competence with compassion in dealing with primary health care, desire for lifelong learning, evidence-based practice, interdisciplinary teamwork, and professional and ethical behavior in practice in order to improve and sustain the health of the population.
Goal
The goal of the Community Medicine teaching programme is to ensure that the medical graduate has acquired public health competencies needed to solve health problems of the individual and the community with emphasis on health promotion, disease prevention, cost-effective/evidence based interventions and follow up.
Field training
Clerkship Programme
The Community Medicine clerkship programme is a one-month comprehensive community based learning experience for the medical undergraduates. During this programme, students visit various public health institutes as well as meet different public health professionals to learn about the public health system in Sri Lanka. In addition, students are given the opportunity to work in groups in order to develop health promotion activities targeted at different groups in the community by applying basic concepts and theories they have learnt.
It provides students the opportunity to be engaged in health promotion by conducting educational sessions, practically involving in work at the clinics, schools, peripheral hospitals and various other public health institutes.
Family Study Programme
Family study programme is a 12 months comprehensive family based learning experience for medical undergraduates. The programme provides opportunity to work with healthy individuals rather than patients to promote health.
Students will have to adopt a different approach to interact with these individuals. The programme provides an opportunity to understand health related behaviors in day to day life and underlying determinants of those behaviors. It provides students the opportunity to be engaged in health promotion through designing individualize health outcomes for family members with long term follow-up and dealing with health conditions they will seldom be exposed to during hospital based training.
Postgraduate programme
Our postgraduate training component consists of research based degrees (MPhil, PhD) as well as short courses.
Our research based degree programmes are primarily centered around large externally funded multidisciplinary public health research programmes. At present, funded research opportunities are available in two areas of research.
- Leptospirosis (ICIDR Project)
- Maternal and child health (GEEPMD Project)
- Leishmaniasis (ECLIPSE Project)