Master’s Degree in Global Health and Crisis Management

Programme info

• Degree programme: Global Health and Crisis Management
• Degree title: Master of Health Care
• Duration of studies: 90 ECTS, 1,5 – 2,5 years

Programme content

Masters’ degree programme in Global Health and Crisis Management focuses on health care and crisis leadership, management, and evidence-based development from the perspectives of global health and humanity, socially sustainable development, health and infection prevention and control as well as communication.  You study global health topics gaining expertise in infection prevention and control both in situations in which communicable diseases have spread or are in a risk to spread locally or even globally, and in situations typical for highly technological environments. You will gain master’s level competencies in infection prevention and control. You learn about global protocols of applied epidemiology, and infection prevention, crisis preparedness, management, and leadership by implementing the tools used at the European and global level.

The teaching is largely based on evidence, global and international models, and best practices in addition to expert experiences from the fields. The most important areas of generic competencies include ethical awareness, research and development methods, and communication in a multidisciplinary team, management, development, and leadership.

Global Health studies are based on global needs. You are provided with general research and development competencies to work in developing, low- and middle-income countries. The problems addressed are global but may also be associated with phenomena such as immigration to Finland and the improvement of this process. Together with the Global Health Ethics, the actual programs transforming our world according to the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development constitute the value base of the Global Health and Crisis Management degree programme.

The degree programme consists of core competence studies, the thesis, and complementary competence studies. Core competence studies and the thesis are compulsory for all students and their scope is 30 + 30 ECTS credits. Scope of the complementary competence studies is 30 ECTS credits and they allow you to deepen and extend your knowledge in crisis management and quality management in infection prevention.

Core competence studies (30 ECTS)

Core competence studies consist of the following study units:

• Global Health Promotion (5 ECTS)
• Global Health Policies and Models (5 ECTS)
• Global Health Communication (5 ECTS)
• Research Methods in Health Care (5 ECTS)
• Global health development (5 ECTS)
• Global health management (5 ECTS)

Complementary competence studies

Complementary competence studies give you the possibility to build your own expertise. You can choose your complementary competences studies from the following modules:

Crisis Management (15 ECTS)
Consist of three study units: Crisis management, Crisis leadership and communications and Crisis preparedness and prevention.

Quality Management in Infection Prevention (15 ECTS)
Consists of three study units: Evidence-based global infection prevention, Epidemiology and biostatistics and Health Care evaluation and infection prevention interventions.

See the curriculum.

Master’s thesis

Master’s thesis is included in the studies. Students in Global Health and Crisis Management complete applied research and evidence-based development in their respective fields of expertise. The thesis is completed according to the Learning by Developing (LbD) pedagogical action model within national, international, or multinational development or research projects or missions integrating theoretical studies with health care, infection prevention and control, or crisis management development and management.

To give you a clearer picture of the kind of work that is done in the programme, here are some examples of work that has been done by our students:

Andérsen, Greta. 2025. Women’s leadership studies in Health Care – a European perspective.  

Kalliomäki, Päivi & Männistö Taru. 2025. Preparedness and awareness among tourists about natural disasters in the Philippines – A Field Study.

Polishchuk, Anna. 2023. Exploring the challenges in the harmonization of clinical evaluation of medical device software across EU member states.

Huttunen, Susanna. 2023. Ethical issues registered nurses experience working in intensive care.

For more information, please contact by e-mail at education.export@laurea.fi.