University College Birmingham has further solidified its commitment to a careers-focussed education with the unveiling of a new Health and Care Professions Council validated MSc Dietetics programme and a recently validated and approved MSc Public Health programme.

The MSc Dietetics programme has already begun with its first cohort of students who have started this month, while MSc Public Health is now taking applications for students to commence in September 2024.

This follows the first cohort of Physiotherapy and Adult Nursing students who graduated from University College Birmingham in September 2023 after studying and undertaking placements during the pandemic years. 

The new courses will add to a strong offering of undergraduate and postgraduate health courses as the University continues to diversify their offer for health disciplines. By building the programmes for these skills, the academic team at University College Birmingham acknowledge the need not just for Nursing courses, but for Allied and Public Health provision.

 The courses will look to support the NHS’s workforce ecosystem, with close attention to the NHS Long Term Workforce plan (LTWP) announced in July 2023. In particular, the LWTP aims to increase training places for Allied Health Professionals by 17,000 places by 2028/29. The University is addressing the skills gap for these health professions and creating pathways that meet the needs of the students who embark on those programmes of study, whilst supporting the needs of the healthcare workforce, including the NHS, independent and private sectors, both for the skills and public health agenda. 

With higher-than-average rates of deprivation and food inequality in the city, Birmingham faces a huge challenge right on its doorstep. The Public Health curriculum has been informed from knowledge exchange with partners in the Food System Team (Public Health) at Birmingham City Council; addressing the challenges that are pertinent to the city, so that practitioners will have a grounding in the unique issues in their area alongside the academic rigour of a qualification to put theory into practice. 

The lived experience of service users and carers has been considered in the planning of the course curriculum, and how students will approach their studies within that context. Student placements will be with partner and local community organisations, further embedding a hyper-local focus for their grounding and practice. With many of the University's graduates staying in Birmingham, these health graduates will feed into the local workforce, ready to work alongside partners with whom they have fostered relationships within their studies.