The Post-Graduate Program in Collective Health (PPGSC) at Paraíba Federal University (UFPB) was approved in 2018 by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel - CAPES- which is a foundation linked to the Ministry of Education of Brazil. It is one of the Post-Graduate Programs at the Health Sciences Center. It is located at Health Sciences Center, cidade universitária, campus I, Castelo Branco I, João Pessoa-Paraíba, Brazil. zipcode 58051-900. e-mail: ppgsc@ccs.ufpb.br

 

The Post-Graduate Program in Collective Health at UFPB, academic master's level, has the following objectives:

a) Train researchers and professors with a critical view of the reality in which they are inserted and where they work, qualified to develop teaching, research and extension activities in the field of Public Health.

b) Promote the development of technological knowledge related to Public Health in its students, in order to qualify them, in order to have a general culture in the area, adequate to the needs of strengthening public policies on health, education and science and technology;

c) Strengthen the teaching-service-community relations, so that the training of the master's students dialogue with the needs of the Unified Health System.

d) Develop local, regional and multicentric research, with high ethical, pedagogical and scientific standard;

e) Raise funds in funding agencies for the development of local, regional and multicentric investigations;

f) Enable the production of qualified knowledge in the field of public health, thus contributing to the technical-scientific and social development of the areas related to Policies, management and care and to Epidemiology;

 

The Post-Graduate Program in Collective Health has two areas of concentration

Epidemiology Area

It intends to produce knowledge through epidemiological studies that offer subsidies for the formulation and implementation, management, and evaluation of public health policies in line with the principles and with the advancement of the Unified Health System.

It has two lines:

1) Health-disease process and population living conditions:

Along this line, studies will be developed that appropriate the theoretical and methodological bases of Epidemiology, using this field of knowledge as a tool to understand the health-disease process, occurrence of injuries and death in populations, with the perspective of offering subsidies for the formulation and implementation of public health policies in line with the principles and with the advancement of the Unified Health System.

2) Epidemiology and Health Services

Along this line, studies will be developed that use the theoretical-methodological framework of epidemiology for the study of health care coverage, effectiveness of programmatic actions and indicators that provide subsidies to the planning, management and evaluation of health services within the scope of the Unified Health System.

Policy, Management and Care Area

It intends to produce knowledge through studies: (1) on the relational processes that are built in the worker/user encounter, aiming to contribute to the adaptation of local health systems to the policies, programs and projects guiding the Unified Health System and; (2) to broaden the debate about the processes of training and qualification of professionals, managers and users in the health sector in line with the Unified Health System.

It has two lines:

1) Education and health training: Along this line, themes related to the planning, execution and evaluation of training processes for health will be worked out based on the needs of the Unified Health System. It encompasses a set of research that permeates Popular Education in Health, Permanent Education in Health and Training in Health.

2) Health policies, care and management: systems, networks and organization of practices. Along this line, studies on the systems, networks and organization of health care practices and their management will be developed, based on participation, collaboration and teaching-service-community integration. It works with care and work management, health assessment, techno-assistance models in health, organization and planning of services.

Graduate profile

Thus, it is intended to develop a graduate profile qualified to:

1. exercise the new functions resulting from the development of scientific research;
2. promote scientific advancement and development and the generation of new technologies and knowledge in the field of public health;
3. conduct properly, ethically and coherently scientific investigations committed to the demands of SUS and the health needs of the populations;
4. be able to work collaboratively with national and international research networks;
5. mediate teaching-learning processes at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the health area, with emphasis on the main areas of the collective health field, using innovative pedagogy that promotes critical and reflective training;
6. produce meaningful knowledge for health and community services;
7. understand the socio-political-cultural context in which it operates, playing the role of the professor and researcher necessary for the transformation of society.

Curriculum framework

Post-Graduate Program in Collective Health at UFPB has a set of mandatory and elective courses that are offered on a semester basis. The courses are taught under the responsibility of permanent professors with the participation of the Program's employees.

Master's students must take at least 30 credits, with 14 credits in mandatory courses and 16 credits in elective courses.

The following courses are common to both areas and mandatory: Collective Health: theory and method, Pedagogical training for teaching in health, Research seminars, Methodology and ethics of scientific research.

The following courses are elective: Health policies, management and care, Health, culture and society, Special topics in collective health, Qualitative health research, Popular Health Education, Health Social Participation, Health education and training, Health Work process, Advanced seminars on Policies, management and care, Nutritional and physical activity epidemiology, Clinical epidemiology, Data analysis, Advanced seminars on epidemiology, Epidemiology and health services,

The Post-Graduate Program in Collective Health, aiming to reach its objectives and the proposed egress profile, adopted the conception of the development of the teaching-learning process and the evaluation based on the active methodologies. Therefore, competencies and skills were proposed for each course. The proposal for conducting the teaching-learning process is anchored in active methodologies. Participatory, creative, dialogic and emancipatory pedagogical processes are encouraged, valuing the learning principles of young people and adults, aiming for meaningful learning in a contextualized way. In addition, after discussion with the faculty, it was decided that all courses should address issues relevant to the contemporary challenges of Public Health in Brazil and whenever possible contextualizing the dissertation projects to the contents covered, aiming at the qualification of academic production and the training of master’s students.

The courses provide opportunities for discussions and reflections on the proposed themes, with a view to deepening the conceptual, theoretical and methodological aspects of the field of public health, based on problem situations, reports of practice, dialogued exhibitions, mini-exhibitions, videos, seminars, directed studies, group dynamics, that is, participatory and dialogical techniques, mobilizing knowledge and skills to achieve the proposed objectives. The proposed evaluation is formative and summative, continuous and systematic throughout the academic semester, considering the record of attendance, attendance, punctuality, participation in the proposed activities, and the products generated at each stage of the work process.

Training, knowledge production and professional development at the local level are sought in the discussions of the courses. Professors have a strong connection with the school health system and are already participating in teaching, research and extension projects at UFPB, linked to the Paraíba State Government, João Pessoa City Hall and other municipalities in Paraíba.

The Post-Graduate Program in Collective Health provides the opportunity to monitor courses (teaching internship) in the health degrees of the Medical Sciences Center and Health Sciences Center, in addition to insertion in institutional projects for the faculty extension and research (PIBIC).