Course Outline

HLTH 301, Semester One, 2016

Description of the Course
This course offers you a blend of big picture health topics (system level) along with the
technical skills required to identify, evaluate, summarise and apply evidence in health care.
HLTH 301 (Evidence in Health) is a 0.25 EFTS course (aka 30 points course). You will
need to spend about 10 hours of study per week (a full study per week is 40 hours). We will
meet you face to face in class for two hours of lecture (Mondays 4-6 PM, see below for
schedule) and one hour for additional class (Fridays 3-4 PM, see below for schedule).
Goals of this course
Learn about the role and use of evidence in health care, and
Build capacity/skills among students in critical appraisal.

Course Coordinator:

Dr Arindam Basu (arindam.basu@canterbury.ac.nz)

Direct all your questions and comments regarding the course to Arindam Basu
Other Lecturers in the course
Professor Ray Kirk (ray.kirk@canterbury.ac.nz)
Professor Ann Richardson (ann.richardson@canterbury.ac.nz)
Annabel Ahuriri Driscoll (annabel.ahuriri-driscoll@canterbury.ac.nz)
Margaret Paterson (margaret.paterson@canterbury.ac.nz)

Time and Venue

Lectures: Every Monday 4:00-6:00 PM at Wheki 204 between 22nd February - 10th April
(First term), and 2nd May - 5th June (Second Term)
Additional Lectures (as announced): Friday, 3-4 PM at Wheki 103, 22nd February - 10th
April (First term), and 2nd May - 5th June (Second Term)

Course Outline

Course Objectives
After completion of this course, we expect that you will be able to demonstrate that you un-

derstand the meaning and application of the following terms and concepts:
Evidence based health
Health systems
Health care economics
Mori perspectives of health
How evidence is used to inform health policy decision making in New Zealand.
Frame answerable research questions for appraisal of evidence
Identify important information sources in health care literature.
Formulate a search strategy and conduct searches of health care databases.

Use bibliographic software to store, sort, categorise and output search results (data).
Appraise cause-effect associations and bias in health care literature.

Synthesise and concisely summarise research findings.

Mode of Teaching
Lectures
Workshops
Discussions
Online Assignments and Learn based Activities
No Prescribed Textbook but readings will be assigned beforehand
Lecture Recordings may be made available on Learn

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Table 1. List of Class Dates and topics. We have 11 Weeks. Each Class will run between 4-6
PM in Wheki 204 on Mondays and/or where indicated, 3-4 PM on Fridays at Wheki 103 (if class
times change or classes will not be offered, this will be announced beforehand in Learn Page
for the class)

Date

Topic

22nd February, Monday, 4-6 PM

Introduction to the course (Arin Basu) and Principles of Evidence Based Health (Arin Basu)

29th February, Monday, 4-6 PM

Cultural Issues in Health (Annabel Ahuriri Driscoll)

7th March, Monday, 4-6 PM

Understanding Validity in Health (Ann Richardson)

14th March, Monday, 4-6 PM

Cause and Effect (Ann)

21st March, Monday, 4-6 PM

Study Designs in Health care (Ann)

28th March, Easter Monday

No Class

4th April, Monday, 4-6 PM

Critical Appraisal Exercise (Ann)

8th April, Friday, 3-4:10 PM

Mid Term Examination

11th April, 2016

No Class (Mid Semester Break)

18th April, 2016

No Class (Mid Semester Break)

25th April, 2016

No Class (Mid Semester Break)

2nd May, 2016, Monday, 4-6PM

Risk Communication in Health (Arin)

9th May, 2016, Monday, 4-6 PM

Education Library Meeting Room

Literature Search Session (Margaret)

16th May, 2016, Monday, 4-6 PM

Grading of Evidence (Arin)

23rd May, 2016, Monday, 4-6 PM

Revman Workshop

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30th May, 2016, Monday, 4-6 PM

Systematic Review (Arin)

3rd June, 2016, Friday, 3-4 PM

Evidence to Policy (Ann) and closing/valedictory

session

Table 2. Assessment for the course

Evaluation
Component

Marks

Mid Term Exami- 35

nation

Description of the Assignment

Due Date

35%

35 Multiple choice questions on all topics taught till 4th

8 April, 2016, Friday, 3-4 PM;

online open book examination

th

April, 2016
Online discussion 20
related to the
topic,
Discuss, taking
into account information from
HLTH301 lectures
and your own
self-reflective
reading and learning, how evidence
can be used to
improve the quality and safety of
health care

20%

You must initiate at least 10 discussion posts between 29th February

and 3rd June, 2016 to be eligible for
assessment.
To be eligible for assessment each
discussion post must have at least
two comments from fellow students.

Range: between 29th

February and 3rd June,
10 new discussions and
each discussion must
have two comments
from other students.

Written
ment

45%

Critical Appraisal essay on one topic

3rd June, 2016, 9 PM deadline

Assign- 45

Course Outline

Assessments for this course

There will be three assessments for this course -- (1) a one-hour mid-term examination, (2)
discussions to be posted on Learn, and (3) a written assignment in the form of a critical appraisal essay on a particular topic. All Assignments are Online and you must submit online
through Learn, the online course management system and using the prescribed templates.
We shall not accept assignments in any other format (e.g, printed, or hand written formats).
Please do not redesign the templates for assignments.

Supporting Literature
We require you to cite up-to-date literature when writing assignments and stating facts or
expressing opinions with cited evidence. You must use a range of of scholarly articles and
texts including internet sites and bibliographical databases. You must use peer reviewed
scholarly articles referenced correctly in APA 6th Edition formatted style. All references
must be positioned as endnotes, and not as footnotes.
Assessment 1: Multiple Choice Question based Examination (35 questions, 35%
weight, due on 8th April, 2016, Friday, 3-4:10 PM)
There will be an online multiple choice question based examination. The examination will be
administered online in Learn with 35 multiple choice questions. The duration of the examination will be one hour. We will allow ten minutes to read and review the questions, thus the
total duration of the examination will be one hour ten minutes, from 3 PM 4:10 PM on Friday, 8th April, 2016 . We recommend you should use a desktop or a laptop/notebook computer connected to the Internet to take this examination. We shall book a computer laboratory session for the time period of the examination. However, if you would prefer to use your
own computing device(s) and take the examination at a place of your choice where secured,
connection to the Internet is available, this is OK. This examination is worth 35% of your
total grade and will consist of 35 questions.
The questions will follow a multiple choice question format. Each question will have a stem,
or a statement to start with and five possible answers. Note that only one out of five answers
is correct. You will have to identify the correct answer to gain full mark (1) for the question. A
wrong answer or wrong choice will be given zero (0) mark. We shall not award any partial
credit to any answer.
An example of a question and a correct answer is presented below. As this is an open book
test, you are free to refer to books, online web pages, google, and use study materials to
answer the questions. From the point of starting the examination, you will have 60 minutes.
After 60 minutes, the examination will cut off itself and will automatically submit the answers
that the student has made. Nevertheless, we encourage the student to repeatedly save the
questions and answers. If you face any unforeseen circumstance after beginning the
examination, you must immediately inform the me, course coordinator, Dr Arindam
Basu or Professor Ann Richardson either by sending an email if possible, or texting
at 022 629 0356, or leaving a voice message at 44161 from a campus phone, or calling
at the landline 03 345 8161, explaining the situation. We shall take all reasonable care

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and precaution to see that you are not disadvantaged by any way. Here is an example of a
question that you may see in the examination.

Sample Question:
Which organ is referred to by the term cardiac?
A.

Lung

B.

Liver

C.

Kidney

D.

Heart

E.

Brain

The correct answer for this question is D (Heart). If you select D will you will get 1, and if
you select any other option, you will get 0, as option D is the only correct answer. We
have uploaded a practice examination on Learn. Please practice these questions before taking the actual examination.
Assessment 2: Discussions to be posted on Learn (20% weight, 20 marks for discussions posted in the relevant discussion section on Learn between 29th February and
3rd June, 2016 )
In this assignment, you will have to post ten unique discussions throughout the period
starting 29th February and 3rd June, 2016, on the following general topic,
Discuss, taking into account information you learned from HLTH301 lectures and
your own self-reflective reading and learning, how evidence can be used to improve
the quality and safety of health care

The learn post will be based on your own reflections based on the topics taught in this
course. Taken together, you will write at least on 10 different issues connected to
evidence and critical appraisal in health (these are termed as discussions). You can
see that in the course, we teach a range of topics and issues. These include the basics
of evidence in health care, culture, how to search literature, how to study cause and
effect in health and healthcare, how to appraise validity and biases in clinical epidemiological studies, different study designs, risk communication, appraisal of diagnosis
and screening, grading of evidence, systematic review, and policy connections. We
also teach you how to use specific software such as Revman. You will need to reflect
the lessons you learn in the class on the real world around you and write a post topic
or build a discussion. You need to build 10 such discussions in Learn, and each discussion must have two other discussions called threads. Each of this will be centered
around the theme we posted above (Discuss, taking into account information from

Course Outline
HLTH301 lectures and your own self-reflective reading and learning, how evidence can
be used to improve the quality and safety of health care).
For example, lets say you read in the news, or come across a news item about biases
in research. Imagine you learned about biases in the class. Now you can do a little
bit more research on this topic and try to link what evidence can you obtain on biases
in research. You will post this to the Learn discussion section for this assignment.
Then lets say another of your classmates commented on the discussion, so it looks
like this:

Figure 1. Your initial post and your friends response.

Then, another classmate joined this discussion, and you have now for your initial topic, a string of your original post and two other discussions (see Figure 2)

Figure 2. Completed discussion with original post and two other posts

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This unit of original discussion initiated by you and carried forward by two of
your classmates for one unit of discussion. You will need 10 such units in the learn
website in the discussion module for Assignment II between 29th February, 2016
and 3rd June, 2016. This means you will not only have to just seek other classmates
to come and comment on your posts, you will also have to take part in their discussions. We shall as and when needed provide you feedbacks on the discussions but our
comments will not count towards your total marks. You will still need one seed discussion (that is the post that starts the discussion) and two branch discussions from
fellow classmates to complete your discussion assignment.
This Assignment will be marked at the end of the semester and is worth 20% of your
total weight.
Assessment 3: Review of a health-related Topic (45% weight, 45 marks, due 3rd
June, 5 PM )
This component of the evaluation will test your ability to apply learned materials on the topics
covered in the course: to critically appraise a health topic. This component of the course
will account for 45% of the overall grade. The late penalty will be as follows. A 5% deduction in the mark will be done for every day late, so if one day late the mark is actual
mark*0.95, 2 days late actual mark*0.90 and so on.
In this assignment, you will frame an answerable research question, and conduct a literature
search. Based on the literature search, you will identify a total of five primary research articles. These five primary research articles will then need to be critically appraised and used
to answer the main question. You will critically appraise each of the five articles and identify
up to seven outcomes. Detailed information related to the seven outcomes should be entered into the Revman software and a report will be produced. The report must be written in
the prescribed format (to be given on the Learn site), and submit through Learn by 3rd June,
2016, 5 PM.
In the report, the student will include the following sections:
An introduction. This section will introduce the main problem and the research question
Research Question. You must frame this question using the PICO (population, intervention or exposure, comparison, and outcomes) framework. We shall cover PICO framework of
asking questions in details in the course.
Literature search. You must provide details of the search terms, search algorithms, the
databases searched, and the results of searching each database. You must also provide the
rationale why out of the many articles retrieved, you selected only five articles.
Critical Appraisal of the Literature. This must be completed in Revman. We shall provide training in Revman software in the course. Appropriate table on the summary of findings
must be entered and described (See Figure 3)

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Description of the key findings. You must write a detailed description of the studies, the
key findings, and the implications of the results of the studies. You must conclude with a well
formulated response to the question under study.
In addition to the above sections, you must use the template we shall provide for this assignment. The word limit for this assignment is 3500 words (range: 3000 - 3800 words). The
word count excludes words in tables, figures, and references.
We have provided here the list of topics on which a student should write the critical appraisal. The student will need to select only one out of the following topics. If the student wants
to work on another topic or a topic on his or her own choice, he/she should discuss
with the course lecturers (Arindam Basu, Ray Kirk, Ann Richardson, Annabel AhuririDriscoll) and inform Dr Arindam Basu in writing no later than 7th March, 2016.

List of Questions for the third Assignment

1. Does Breast Feeding Lead to Better Cognitive Development in Children?
2. How effective is Cochlear Implant for children with congenital hearing loss?
3. What is the effectiveness of nicotine replacement therapy for achieving smoking cessation?
4. Do School Based interventions (for instance that focus on more physical activity) benefit children with obesity?
5. Are Antidepressants Effective for Teenagers who are diagnosed with Depression?
6. Are breathing exercises beneficial for Asthma?

Course Outline