Health and Social Care Course

Often, people’s health and wellbeing needs are best met by combining healthcare and social care. However, in many countries, social services are underfunded and difficult to integrate into traditional health care systems. A lack of coordination, insufficient governance, and rigid categorization schemes make integrating health and social care challenging.

National and state policy initiatives over the last ten years have aimed to improve integrated care through new delivery and payment models. These efforts, primarily focused on the US Medicaid public insurance program for Americans with low incomes, have pushed for new activities to identify and respond to social risk and needs. These initiatives have included requirements or incentives for healthcare organizations to screen patients for social risks and help them connect to social services, broader community-level collaborations (e.g., clinic-based food pantries), and integration of healthcare and social service networks to align goals, information sharing and management structures.

While these efforts may appear promising, they are still in early stages, and evidence is sparse. The challenge for health and social-care leaders is to keep learning from these initiatives, to improve and evaluate their quality, and to invest in key enablers such as funding, education and technology.

Our Health and Social Care course will give you the skills and confidence to work across the health and social care sectors in a variety of roles, both in the UK and internationally. You will also gain a thorough understanding of the wider societal, legal and organisational context for your work, including how to address the challenges that face global health and social care today. health and social care