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Department of Public Health and Primary Care (PHPC)

The Department of Public Health and Primary Care (PHPC) is one of Europe’s leading academic departments of population health sciences. It comprises over 400 staff and graduate students, including more than 25 professors, readers, university lecturers, and other senior academic staff.  

Groups in the Department are underpinned by major programme grants, such as those from the UK Medical Research Council (MRC), the Wellcome Trust, the British Heart Foundation (BHF), Cancer Research UK, the UK National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), the European Union, the US National Institutes of Health, industry, and other sources.   

The Department provides internationally-recognised expertise in: genetic epidemiology, biomarkers, cohort studies, quantitative methods, public health, primary care, and behavioural sciences.  

Major areas of application include common chronic diseases (eg, cardiometabolic diseases, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases), and major behavioural risk factors driving these conditions (e.g., consumption of tobacco, alcohol, and adverse diets).   

The Department benefits greatly from the expertise arising from its strategic collaborations with the Genome Campus, Quantitative MRC Units and genomic medicine. 

It provides excellent training and educational programmes in biostatistics, epidemiology, public health, and primary care, at both undergraduate and graduate levels, including training of Academic Clinical Fellows.