Department Of Behavioral Sciences

Who are we?

Behavioural Sciences Department is one of the departments forming the School of Public Health and Social Sciences. It has been in existence since 1980s as part of the Community Health Department. The department has a rich mix of academic and technical staff members with backgrounds and experiences in various public health fields including medical sociology, medical psychology, medical anthropology, medical communication and health economics, providing a great resource for the department’s input into teaching, research and service provision in fulfilling university mission and vision.

 What do we do?

The department is mainly engaged in teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled in various academic programs including Public Health, Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing and Environmental Health Sciences. The department’s vision is to expand the department to have Medical Sociology, Health Psychology, Health Anthropology, Health Economics, Health Law and Learning Disability Services units by 2025.

 Programs and courses we offer

The department runs two postgraduate programs:

• Master of Science in Behaviour Change (MSc. BC)
• Master of Science Behavioural Change Communication for Health (MSc. BCC)

And two short courses:

• Strategic Planning for Behaviour Change and
• Qualitative Research Methods
• Introduction to qualitative data analysis using NVIVO

 Members of the department are also involved in running several university-wide short courses.

 Departmental Research Agenda

Major research foci for the department include reproductive health; social and behavioural aspects of diseases; HIV and key populations; human rights and health;migration and health; health economics and financing; and human resource for health. Members are currently involved in the following research projects;

• ‘Improving access to sexual and reproductive health services in men who have sex with men in Tanzania and Malawi: Developing an acceptable and effective intervention for them with them.’  Funded by DFID, NORAD and SIDA through EHPSA.  This is a two and a half year project starting 2016.
• ‘Access to health services for key populations in Tanzania’.  This is a 5 year project funded by DANIDA from 2016.
• Measuring stigma and discrimination in health facilities in Morogoro region.