Public Health Nutrition

Overview

Course Details

This Public Health Nutrition MSc course offered by the University of Southampton will give you the skills for a career that makes a difference. Graduates of this degree have gone on to work for the government and public bodies both in the UK and abroad, including Public Health England, local government, and non-government organisations.

You’ll learn how to:

• develop, plan and evaluate public health nutrition programmes
• initiate health behaviour change using social media, community engagement and advocacy
• apply quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques
• use SPSS statistics software
• manage undernutrition in humanitarian emergency settings

You can personalise this course to your interests through optional modules and your dissertation. In previous years students have worked closely with real-world partners on dissertation projects, including the Southampton and Portsmouth City Councils, and Age UK.

Public health nutrition is an interdisciplinary profession, and this is reflected in your learning. Your lecturers are academics from across the University, in Public Health, Health Geography, Demography and Social Science, who are actively involved in research or are working in the sector.

We are home to the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre, which brings academic and clinical research together. This is the only such nutrition research centre in the UK.

We offer 4 other pathways on our Public Health Master's. If you decide that you’d like to change to a different public health specialism within the first 2 weeks of the semester you’ll be able to change your degree.

Your other Public Health MSc pathway options are:

• Public Health - Discover our Public Health master's degree at the University of Southampton. Boost your career skills in global disease prevention & management.
• Public Health Global Health - Discover our Public Health Global Health master's degree at the University of Southampton. Learn the links between health, climate change, urbanisation and conflict.
• Public Health Intelligence - Discover our Public Health Intelligence master's degree at the University of Southampton. Learn how to collect and analyse public health intelligence research.
• Public Health Management - Discover our Public Health Management master's degree at the University of Southampton. Learn to apply systems thinking to global and local health issues.

This course is also available as an intercalation degree for undergraduate medical students. Intercalation means that you'll take a year out of your undergraduate medicine degree to gain this extra award.

Career Opportunities

This master’s degree is very applied. Learning reflects real-world multi-disciplinary teams and assessment is by practical tasks. This will prepare you well for employment across the sector, particularly: 

• as a nutrition practitioner in public health, developing, implementing and evaluating nutrition policies and programmes
• as an academic researcher
• as a public health intelligence officer, looking at the incidence, distribution, and possible control of nutrition-related diseases such as obesity

Previous graduates have gone on to work for the Medical Research Council, Health Education England, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Portsmouth City Council, charities such as Action against Hunger and private food companies such as Waitrose.  

Some graduates go on to take a PhD and some are working for themselves as independent consultants or educators.  

Once you successfully complete this course you’ll be able to register as a Registered Associate Nutritionist (ANutr) with the Association for Nutritionists.  

You’ll also gain transferable skills that will improve your employability in whichever career you choose, including: 

• how to conduct research projects
• collaboration, negotiation and influencing skills
• effective communication using a range of methods