- General welcome
Congratulations on your offer of a place on our master's programme. We look forward to welcoming you to LSHTM and to the MSc Reproductive & Sexual Health Research.
The year ahead will be very busy but it will also be very exciting. LSHTM is a stimulating place to be, with a diverse student population, staff undertaking topical research and with a wide variety of seminars always available.
We are working hard to make sure you are offered not only well supported learning but the opportunities to meet and converse with staff and fellow students. You will find that you learn a lot from the other students and informal meetings with members of staff as well as from the formal teaching. So please make sure you take advantage of the activities you are offered, and we are always open to requests and suggestions, so do not hesitate to let us know any queries or ideas you have.
Please find your Welcome Week timetable below (coming soon). Lots of questions will become clear then as we discuss and get you settled into the MSc.
To help with that, we鈥檇 also love to get to know you and to match you with a suitable tutor. Please could you prepare a short introduction to yourself by as soon as possible and by Monday 23rd September.
Dr Melissa Palmer, Programme Director
- Welcome Week
- Overview of the MSc
Please make sure you attend the Welcome Week sessions as we will be introducing you to the programme, teaching staff and other students on your programme. You will be given information about life at LSHTM and your programme as well as the opportunity to meet staff and other students online. So please take part and do not miss out on finding out about how teaching will operate this academic year.
Teaching starts the week following the Welcome Week. Most modules will consist of face-to-face lectures as well as smaller facilitated groupwork sessions. You will be also encouraged to be in contact with teaching staff via emails, discussion boards or video conferencing.
Every student is allocated a personal tutor, although this may be largely for pastoral care it is also for academic advice and support. A tutor is someone who takes an interest in your progress and with whom you can discuss problems, academic or personal. Allocation of tutors will be made during the Welcome Week and we need information from you about your background 鈥 so please we have already mentioned.
Prior to that the Programme Director will field all enquiries and concerns so email them on melissa.palmer@lshtm.ac.uk
One thing that we will push you to decide almost immediately are your module options for Term 1. The range of options is very limited, which makes the decisions thankfully few. Choices will be discussed during the Programme Directors鈥 briefing on day 2 of Welcome Week
Choices of modules for Terms 2 and 3 need to be made mid-Term 1. However, you will be well prepared for these choices because the Programme Handbook on Moodle contains descriptions of the modules and because you can discuss your choices with your tutor.
The year is a very full one, but an exciting one. LSHTM is a stimulating place to be, with a wide variety of seminars always available. You will find that you learn a lot from each other too. Most students get stressed at some time or other with the sheer pace of the programme, but at the end of the year you will be amazed how much you have learnt, and most students enjoy their year tremendously. Working at this level can be a challenge so be aware there are professional welfare and counselling services on offer to support students.
Each week there will be lectures as well as facilitated classroom sessions and there are also private study periods - and you will need those! There will be also be reading to be undertaken if you are to gain full advantage of this programme. Because of the amount of study time required it is not recommended that full-time students do more than 6 hours of paid work in any term-time week.
This is the third year that we are assessing all modules at the end of each module rather than by exams in June. For Term 1 modules these assessments can be at the end of Term 1 or beginning of Term 2. You will be briefed about the timing by each module organiser.
- Summer project
We do not start project preparation until Term 2, although there will be a briefing session before the end of Term 1. You can discuss any thoughts you have about projects with your tutor but we do not expect you to have any ideas at this stage and we urge you to keep an open mind 鈥 after all you don鈥檛 know yet what will excite your interest during the programme! We leave it up to you, with guidance from your tutor and Programme Director, to choose your own supervisor, and we will provide you with advice and guidance on this.
- Computer skills
For those of you who need to improve your computing skills, any practice you can get between now and start of term will certainly help you. All assessments are submitted in Word and basic spreadsheet skills are also very useful. Therefore any practice with Word and Excel will help! Simple skills like being able to copy files from one place to another, using Google Chrome or another browser, will save you time struggling in a class. We use the statistical package Stata extensively during the programme, along with the opportunity to apply these skills in R, but we do not expect you to know either statistical package in advance.
An inexpensive calculator (such as Casio FX-83GTCW) will be useful to you throughout the course.
- Information for new half-time students
The first thing to say is that students studying half-time at LSHTM usually do well, enjoy themselves, and pass successfully - so please look forward to a good two years!
We refer to this method of study as 鈥渉alf-time鈥 because you really do need to allow half of each term-time week for study. It is often possible to reduce this to two days actual attendance for live sessions but this cannot be guaranteed and in any event it is unwise to use private study time for anything except just that. The programme requires a lot of personal reading and study; it is easy to fall behind if this is not budgeted for. A certain flexibility with employment arrangements is essential.
Term 1
The first term for full-time students is an intensive one where they are introduced to reproductive health, some demography, statistics, computing, epidemiology, social science methods and other courses. For half-time students the pace is more manageable, but the problem arises about which of these courses to take first.
The recommended option is to attend Epidemiology and Statistics as these will be needed for Term 2 and 3 modules (usually these run on a Tuesday and Friday morning) . If you wish to take Extended Epidemiology (optional) then you will need to attend on Wednesday mornings as well. No reproductive health sessions are therefore taken until Year 2, which means that the module Sexual Health in Term 2 must be left until Year 2.
The disadvantage that arises from half-time study in the first term is that modules in Terms 2 and 3 do assume that you know all the first term material and therefore some extra work is sometimes necessary to fill in gaps in knowledge, however this has not proved to be a serious problem for previous students.
Terms 2 and 3
In Term 2 full-time students take four modules. All modules are designed on a 鈥渇ive half-week鈥 basis, so one module will run all of Monday/Tuesday plus Wednesday morning for five weeks, with the other in the latter half of the week. Often the Wednesday half-day will be timetabled for private study but this cannot be guaranteed and some modules do timetable taught sessions on the Wednesday.
For half-time students, attendance on more than two days of the week may not be necessary - we timetable to avoid this - but it is sometimes required.
Some modules are better timetabled for half-time students than others and you can鈥檛 be sure of the actual arrangements until you get a timetable for your chosen module. However no module timetables sessions outside their respective half of the week and therefore if you plan to be in student mode for the whole of that half-week then there will be no problem.
In Term 2 it will be possible to take up to two modules from the LSHTM master's programmes by distance learning offered via the University of London, which allows more flexibility in the timing of studying the material as it is self-directed. This may be of particular interest to half-time students, although usually take-up is low. The choice of modules is limited and must be taken in Term 2. Details will be available at the start of the term.
In Term 3, one more module is taken, running in the second half of the week i.e. Wednesday afternoon, Thursday and Friday. The remainder of the week is for private study.
The advantages of half-time study
1. Students must take five modules in across Terms 2 and 3. For half-time students, the only requirement is to complete these over the two years. Therefore there is much greater flexibility over which modules to take, and when. Half-time students can, if they wish, take a module from one timetable slot in one year, and another from the same slot the following year; a flexibility that full-time students do not have.
2. Half-time students do not usually undertake their project until June of Year 2. That means in Year 1 there is a large gap between the end of modules in May and the start of the next academic year. It is recommended that half time students take 3 modules in Year 1 and only 2 in Year 2 leaving more time to undertake their project. Also many half-time students are able to arrange with their employers to go back to work for this period and 鈥渂ank鈥 their half-time entitlement to allow some full-time study over the project period in Year 2.
3. Full-time students are required to work on their research project from shortly after the end of term 3 assessments until the deadline in early September. Half-time students can of course plan and work on their project over the whole two-year period and therefore have more flexibility. However very few actually do this! For all the good intentions the norm is actually for half-time students to do little towards their project in Year 1 but arrange more time off from employment in Year 2 and cope with their project almost as a full-time student would. This is up to you, but it is a good idea as trying to do the project half-time in Year 2 can be stressful if pressure from your job increases. Remember however that at the end of Year 1 you still have not been taught some basic material of Term 1 and this does make it more difficult to make progress on the project in Year 1. Organising to have extra time for the project in Year 2 is a good idea!
- Reading list
It is worth getting used to reading academic texts before you start. If you have time, you can start having a look at a selection of readings of a Term 1 compulsory module for RSHR students, Foundations in Reproductive Health. All will be available from the LSHTM library once you have registered.
Selected Readings for Foundations in Reproductive Health
Foundations in Reproductive Health is a compulsory module for RSHR students and below are the selected readings you may be interested in reading in advance. All will be available from the LSHTM library once you have registered.
Collumbien M., et al. . World Health Organization. 2012. (Chapter 1 & 2)
Graham, Wendy, Susannah Woodd, Peter Byass, Veronique Filippi, Giorgia Gon, Sandra Virgo, Doris Chou et al. "Diversity and divergence: the dynamic burden of poor maternal health." The Lancet (2016).
Souza JP, Tuncalp O, Vogel JP, Bohren M, Widmer M, Oladapo OT, Say L, Gulmezoglu AM, Temmerman M. (2014) BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology Volume 121, Issue Supplement s1.
Ronsmans C. et al. (2006) 鈥溾 Lancet 368(9542): 1189-1200
Barot S, Cohen SA. . Guttmacher Policy Review; 18(2):27-33
Boydell, V., Schaaf, M., George, A., Brinkerhoff, D. W., Van Belle, S., & Khosla, R. (2019). . Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 27(2), 64鈥75.
Kabiru, C. W. (2019). Journal of Adolescent Health, 65(6), S1-S2.
Hardee, K., Harris, S., Rodriguez, M., Kumar, J., Bakamjian, L., Newman, K., & Brown, W. (2014). Achieving the goal of the London Summit on Family Planning by adhering to voluntary, rights-based family planning: what can we learn from past experiences with coercion? International perspectives on sexual and reproductive health, 40(4), 206-214.
Mayhew, S. H., Newman, K., Johnson, D., Clark, E., Hammer, M., Mohan, V., & Ssali, S. (2020). . Health Policy, 124(6), 599-604.
Garc铆a-Moreno, C., Hegarty, K., d'Oliveira, A. F. L., Koziol-McLain, J., Colombini, M., & Feder, G. (2015). . The Lancet, 385(9977), 1567-1579.
Sedgh, G., & Keogh, S. C. (2019). . Reproductive health, 16, 1-10.
Background reading
Sasser J. (2018) On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women鈥檚 Rights in the Era of Climate Change. A critique of population control narratives reproduced by international development actors in the 21st century
Wellings, K & Johnson, AM. The Lancet, Volume 382, Issue 9907, 1759 鈥 1762. Highlighting the importance of a holistic approach to sexual health
Reproductive biology
Students should familiarise themselves with the basics of reproductive biology, if not already known.
You can consult these if needed:
BBC Bitesize. .
BBC Bitesize. .
Statistics and Epidemiology
These will be available from the LSHTM library once you have registered. Important texts for term one methods courses:
Kirkwood B. and Sterne J. Essential Medical Statistics. Blackwell. (2nd edition, 2003)
Campbell M. and Swinscow T. Statistics at Square One. 2009. BMJ books.
Webb P., Bain C., Pirozzo S (ed.). Essential Epidemiology: An Introduction for Students and Health Professionals. Cambridge University Press. (2nd edition)
Rowntree D. (1991) Statistics without tears. Penguin. For those of you completely new to statistics this book helps with some of the basic concepts
- Information for returning half-time students
Welcome back to the second year of your programme!
An important thing to remember is that E slot modules run in the second half of the week i.e. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday am, with the remainder of the week for private study. You will need to consider this when making arrangements with employers etc.
The summer project is an important time for you this year 鈥 basically because you have to cope with it in the same way as full-time students but you have other calls on your time.
For projects, we have always recommended that half-time students try and book as much time off as possible during the summer so that you can devote it to the project. Projects can develop slower than you think. If you manage it in less time than budgeted then you鈥檙e in credit, but this is much better than being in panic, with work demands to cope with as well. Please don鈥檛 hesitate to discuss potential problems with us.
Don鈥檛 forget that you also have full access to things like the one-off special courses that are laid on, often during reading weeks, as well as the Careers Service.
Page last updated September 2024