PhD in Public Health

OVERVIEW:

PhD of Public health is the highest degree in the school’s training system. Since 2005, the school has the annual target accepting 3 candidates for doctorate program. The first PhD program began in March 29^th, 2006.

APPLICANTS AND REQUIREMENTS:

1. Requirements of degrees and proclaimed scientific publication: Examinees should meet one of the following requirements:

1.1. Applicants with medical doctor (MD), pharmacist, or Bachelor of Public Health background and a Master degree:

a. The Master degree is of a relevant field or nearly relevant field of study with the courses enrolled (i.e. applicant holding Master of Public Health degree): The applicant must have at least one scientific paper/article published national or international professional scientific journal before the application date and this paper topic is in the same direction with proposed dissertation outline proposal.

b. The Master degree is of a ”Non-relevant” field (i.e. Master of Internal Medicine, Master of Surgery, etc.): The Application must have least 2 scientific paper/articles published national or international scientific journal before the application date and the paper topics are in the same direction/area with proposed dissertation outline proposal.

1.2. Applicant has university degree in health background: MD degree, pharmacist degree, or Bachelor of Public Health degree.

1.3. Applicants with Bachelor degree of other subjects, graduated as “good grade” or higher, and has completed supplimentary public health basic courses:

a. The applicant must have regular official bachelor degree, from “excellent grade” or higher, and at least 2 scientific paper/articles (similar to criteria mentioned in category 1.1 above).

b. The applicant must have regular official bachelor degree, from “good grade”, and at least 3 scientific paper/articles (similar to criteria mentioned in category 1.1 above).

1.4. To-be-transferred applicant: must have degree of Second level of Specialization in Public Health Specialist with the major suitable with that of the doctorate degree. The applicant must have a research outline proposal and at least 1 article (similar to criteria mentioned in category 1.1 above).

2. Requirements on working experiences: Applicants for PhD program must have at least 2 years of professional work in the subject enrolled (started from the university degree graduation date)

TRAINING PROGRAM:

Mode of training:

• Medical doctors with good, excellent, and outstanding grade degrees:

+ Full-time course: 4 years
+ Part-time course: 5 years

• Those who have bachelor degree of other subjects, from the good grade and higher, and have attended supplimentary basic courses for public health (completed with certificate of attendance)

+ Full time course: 4 years
+ Part-time course: 5 years

• Health background with relevant master degree: 

+ Full time course: 2-3 years
+ Part-time course: 3-4 years

• Second Degree of Specialization in PH:

+ Full time course: 2-3 years
+ Part-time course: 3-4 years

Entrance exams:

- Applicant with university bachelor degree only and/or with non-relevant Master degree: examination with 5 subjects:

+ Basic subject: Probability & Biostatistics
+ Fundametal subject: Epidemiology
+ Specialized subjects: Health management
+ English language: C level
+ Dissertation research outline proposal defense: Oral presentation (accordance with registered topics)

- Those who have relevant Master degree: examination with 3 subjects:

+ Specialized subjects: Health management
+ English: C level
+ Dissertation research outline proposal defense: Oral presentation (accordance with registered topics)

- Second Degree of Specialization in PH: examination with 3 subjects:

+ Basic subject: Probability & Biostatistics
+ Fundametal subject: Epidemiology
+ Dissertation research outline proposal defense: Oral presentation (accordance with registered topics)

Foreign language exams exemption:

- Foreign language certificates from oversea studies

- International qualification: IELTS (score of 6.0 or higher) or TOEFL (score of 550 or higher), issued by an international organisation, within 2 years to the examination date.

- Oversea bachelor or master degree in which the language of study is one among 5 languages: English, Russian, French, Germany, or Chinese.

PhD candidates who don’t have master degree, or master degrees of other specialised disciplines:

Part I. Theoritical coursework: the candidate must complete all the coursework requirements before working in the dissertation:

This phase aims to provide PhD students with basic knowledge of public health (at graduate level), which will help them carry out their theses in later phase.

In particular, PhD students will join with master degree students in their regular courses of MPH training program at the School.

Part II. Doctorate specialised monograph (accounted for 5-10 credit hours)

This aims at providing PhD students with scientific research competencies, research plans, updating information of the specialised subjects related to the dissertation theme. Furthermore, this component also provides data analysis skills to help PhD students to work with their own data for the theses.

Each PhD student must complete 3 major monographs with the total of 5-10 credits, in particular:

 Monograph 1: Literature review: PhD student has to collect available information, search through published studies, and statistics, and international papers, as well as domestic literature relevant to the dissertation topic.

o If documents are in foreign language, PhD student has to translate the abstract/resume into Vietnamese.

o The literature review should be arranged in relevant sections/ parts so that readers understand the context of the dissertation, on international and domestic perspectives: what previous authors have done, what the main results are, whether any conclusion or suggestions can be applied to the dissertation, which theories or techniques, any issues relating to methodology needed, etc. The literature review will help PhD student to review and revisit the dissertation proposal outline, the appropriateness of the theories, and research methods. As an independent researcher, the PhD student will then need to demonstrate that his/her dissertation does not repeat any research previously conducted, and this project has its own creativeness, and independent thinking.

o The literature review should be based on documents/ publication within the last 5 years (older papers can be referred to if they are of particular importance to the theories or research method of the dissertation).

The final product required is a short monograph report (of at least 30 pages, all formats follow the regulation of the Ministry of Education and Training). Oral presentation of this literature review exercise will then  be graded by an ad-hoc PhD committee. 

Monograph 2: Development and pilot of the research instruments. PhD students need to present a detailed plan including: steps to develop and pilot research instruments, and procedure to pilot questionnaire set (at least once). The researcher will then pilot the research instruments in the field, report and draw out experiences, strength and weakness of the instrument, and suggest what should be changed to make it more suitable. In this major, the School can organise one (or some) seminars, which can provide guidance to the PhD students on the methods to develop an instrument (general rules and principles, development methods, and suggestion in developments, some hints/ suggestions, etc.)

The required product of this second exercise is another short monograph report (of at least 30 pages, all formats follow the regulation of the Ministry of Education and Training). This assignment will summarise all the procedure of developing the instruments (including plans, aims, meanings, detailed activities, and piloted results, the instrument before and after experiment are attached. Oral presentation of this monograph will then also be graded by an ad-hoc PhD committee.

Note: In the situation that the PhD student chooses to develop his/her dissertation based on secondary datasets (no data collection in the field), the requirements for the second monograph will be as followed: the PhD student must propose the analysing strategies that will be used. In particular, this plan includes needed variables, and variables in the original dataset relevant to the theme. Then, the student should clarify which variables need to be recoded, or other actions needed to support the data analysis for the dissertation. After that, a detailed analysis plan should be presented (including descriptive analysis, binary and any multivariate analysis, or other complicated/advanced techniques if there are any).

The required product of this exercise is another short monograph report (of at least 30 pages, all formats follow the regulation of the Ministry of Education and Training). The following topics should be covered in this report: all the secondary variables related to the dissertation, definition of variables, assessment criteria, plan of detailed analysis, dummy tables or proposed models (i.e. regression models), etc.. (if any regression model presented, there should be the list of independent and dependent variables). The PhD student must clarify which variables are in exist and available in the original dataset, which new variables should be created, recoded from the old ones.

Monograph 3: Advanced methodology and data analysis techniques). PhD students are required to enrol in at least one of the following courses: advanced biostatistics, data analysis (using specialised software – either quantitative and/or qualitative) advanced research methods or other equivalent courses. During the course, the students need to complete all the requirements (assignments and exams). The final grade will be valid for PhD student’s academic record. Hanoi School of Public Health offers such short courses in a regular base, so PhD students are encouraged to take part in those classes before their data collection and analysis.

All the monographs of PhD training program – as mentioned above - are based on self-study, and independent research, with the support from PhD dissertation advisors. Assessment and grading of these exercises will be based on the evaluation of written monograph and oral presentation, as well as other mechanism (mentioned above). The oral presentations will be scheduled and conducted in scientific seminar sessions of the academic departments/ offices of the School (except for the third one, only course grade is required).

The PhD ad-hoc subcommittee to evaluate the oral presentations consists of at least 3 members, who have academic distinctions (PhD, DSc, Associate Professor, or Professor) and proved themselves as leading experts and scientists in the field of the monograph assignment that the PhD student focus on. The Dean of HSPH – the Chair of Council of Scientific Research and Education of Hanoi School of Public Health (or another staff appointed by the Dean) will officially issue the decision for establishing each subcommittee. Each subcommittee serves in an ad-hoc base and has responsibility to assess only one PhD student. Members of this subcommittee must consist of at least one scientist who are not faculty member of Hanoi School of Public Health.

Part III: PhD dissertation

- The content and layout of the dissertation follow the current regulations of the Ministry of Education and Training.

- The current regulations of the Ministry of Education and Training will be applied in all processes, including: Inviting advisors/supervisors, defending the dissertation at the School level, establishing the national committee to evaluate the dissertation, etc.

PhD student with Master of Public Health degree:

Those PhD students with master degree in Public Health only need to complete part II and III above.

GENERAL REGULATIONS:

-     In order to conduct the dissertation research project, the PhD students have to follow the overall procedures of research approval at the School, of which, the research proposal must be registered to the HSPH Institutional Ethical Review Board for consideration and approval according to the existing regulations.

-   PhD students have the responsibilities to seek their own finding and budget for dissertation projects.

-    If the PhD student would like to request for financial support for research from the School, he/she must submit the outline research proposal of the dissertation to the Dept. of Scientific Research and Int. Cooperation of the school, attached with detailed budget proposal and plan. The budget plan should also be sent to the School Leadership. Then, the School will consider if any grant (and from which funding sources) should be awarded to the PhD student to conduct the dissertation.  

   - For the research projects proposed to carry out in the strategic field sites of the School (such as Chililab), which include original research (new data will be collected), or any research using secondary data partially or totally extracted from existing dataset of the School in such sites:  PhD student need to submit the dissertation research proposal to the Council of Scientific Research and Education of the School and also follow the approved procedures and regulations related to these sites (regardless of the sources of funding for the dissertation research).

• Download the outline of PhD training program in Public Health [PDF format - 240 KB]
• List of doctoral students and dissertation topics: (upcoming)
• Latest news and enrolment updates in News / Documents