Master of Science in Environmental and Public Health Management

Programme Director: Dr CHUNG, Shan Shan

Environmental health, carbon neutrality and food safety are among the top priorities of Hong Kong today. On a world scale, managing resources well and living in harmony with nature are the keys to a sustainable future. These issues and core concerns however are interdependent of each other. A case in point is the COVID-19 outbreak since 2019–20.  While this appears to be a pure health or public health crisis, it has led the mainland Chinese government to make a swift ban on a centuries old environmental malpractice – human consumption of wild animals.  In addition, amidst the imminent call to wear personal protective wears, their proper collection and disposal (if not recovery) have become an environmental lacuna, leading to hundreds of surgical mask waste found on beaches in Hong Kong and tonnes of clinical waste uncollected at hospitals and quarantine sites. This incident and other local environmental health issues, such as the controversies of whether two modern incinerators should be built in Hong Kong, have refocused public attention to the imminent need to build a healthy, clean and resource efficient society together with proper food monitoring, handling and processing management systems for the prevention of food poisoning and environmental degradation.

By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the major objective of the programme is to integrate management techniques into the technicalities of environmental protection for safeguarding public health and restoring environmental integrity. In addition to the conventional issues of environmental protection, the interconnection among regulatory control, policy, management techniques, social and ethical values, health risk analysis and environmental conservation will be covered in detail. This programme also covers a number of important and popular international standards related to environment and public health: ISO 14001, ISO 50001, ISO 14064, ISO 22000 and ISO 45001. Students should be competent to set up the mentioned systems and perform internal audits of the respective standard for an organization.

The programme is offered on both part-time (two to four years, with two years as the recommended duration) and full-time (12 months) bases. Lectures, tutorials, seminars and field trips will be conducted mainly on weekday evenings and sometimes on Saturdays or Sundays. Merit-based scholarships are offered to the top graduates if their GPAs are above 3.5.  Scholarships for part-time students, Targeted TPg Fellowships and students being accepted by the World Health Organization as interns at Geneva are also available.

The structure of the curriculum is as follows:

Requirements

Students will have to complete two Required Courses (6 units), five Elective Courses (15 units) and a MSc Dissertation (6 units), perform satisfactorily in the written examinations and earn a cumulative GPA of at least 2.50 to qualify for the MSc degree. The Postgraduate Diploma shall be awarded to students who have attained a cumulative grade point average (cGPA) of 2.5 or above for the two core courses and five other elective courses.