Dear Sir, I am doing Masters in Public Health from University of York, UK(which is a Russel group university of UK) and its assignments and dissertation requirements and checking are quite strict both in terms of content and plagiarism. So there is zero tolerance on plagiarism as well as the content should be exactly according to the guidelines otherwise they fail the assignments and dissertations. Also they check all the assignments and dissertations in the turnitin software and already 2 of my classfellows have been banned from MPH course and kicked out of the university and deported from UK to there home countries in excuse of plagiarism and another 2 have been kicked out because they failed straight in 5 assignments in the first attempt. So this university has very complicated rules. So kindly keep this in mind all this scenario. All our assignments and dissertations are required to be on Harvard referencing style format only otherwise the assignment and dissertation would be marked zero straight away.
So our dissertation minimum word count requirement set by our department is 10,000 words and maximum word count is 16,000 so keep this in mind when preparing the proposal.
So now first of all I have decided the Topic with my supervisor and broadly it can be “Effects of smoking cessation on recovery and treatment outcomes of TB patients in Pakistan”. Now you can definitely include a word or two or a bit more in this topic like a systematic review or a policy review or a critical review or any type of analysis whatever method you are gonna use so that can definitely be added in the topic. Any type of review would definitely be good whichever suits the best on this type of topic on which you would be able to do the best high scoring dissertation.
This website is our university marking criteria for dissertation. Please have a look at it carefully:
https://www.york.ac.uk/media/healthsciences/documents/student-intranet/exams-assess/marking-criteria/MarkingCriteria_L7_diss.pdf
I have given 12 examples of dissertation given on our university portal for us. These dissertations are of former students of Master in Public Health in our University of York in past years who were granted above 70 marks on these dissertation. So the dissertations should be like similar to them or if more better then thats really good
Now I am sending my conversation with my supervisor about discussion for dissertation on email when I told her that this topic is in my mind. Following was her reply:
I’ve attached the dissertation guidelines which goes into depth on the types of dissertations that students can do. Many students do a systematic or scoping review, or a policy review. Very few students do primary studies where they collect the data themselves. So, yes, a desk-based study from the UK is fine.
Your question on TB care in Pakistan sounds interesting, although you will need to consider how you would assess current TB care in Pakistan. Clearly consider what your research question is and try to make this as specific as possible.
Which aspect of management are you particularly interested in?
E.g. Is it active/passive case finding? or diagnosis or provision of DOTS? reducing loss to follow up?
Are you just interested in drug-sensitive or also MDR/XDR TB?
E.g. you could do a systematic review of effective approaches to TB case finding or increasing treatment adherence (or other aspects of TB) across LMICs, and then compare the findings on effective approaches with current policy/practice in Pakistan, and then make recommendations for improvement.
A good starting point is to check and see if previous systematic reviews have been conducted on this. You can start by searching the Cochrane database of systematic reviews: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/ NB- using systematic review evidence in your assignments will strengthen them, so please do look at the Cochrane site.
You should also consider taking the module on systematic reviews next term. It will really help the methods you use in your dissertation.
If you could send through an outline of:
The problem
Your research question(s)
The approach/method you intend to take
Then my supervisor sent different types of reviews that can be done in the dissertation obviously one out of them like systematic review or a policy review etc… any one of them
Then my supervisor emailed me few days later this: Here are some papers from our team here in York on TB and Tobacco that you may find useful in thinking about your dissertation:
Siddiqi K, Khan A, Ahmad M, Dogar O, Kanaan M, Newell JN, Thomson H. Action to stop smoking in suspected tuberculosis (ASSIST) in Pakistan: a cluster randomized, controlled trial. Ann Intern Med. 2013 May 7;158(9):667-75. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-158-9-201305070-00006. PMID: 23648948.
Dogar, O., Elsey, H., Khanal, S., & Siddiqi, K. (2016). Challenges of Integrating Tobacco Cessation Interventions in TB Programmes: Case Studies from Nepal and Pakistan. Journal of Smoking Cessation, 11(2), 108-115. doi:10.1017/jsc.2015.20
Elsey, H., Khanal, S., Manandhar, S. et al. Understanding implementation and feasibility of tobacco cessation in routine primary care in Nepal: a mixed methods study. Implementation Sci 11, 104 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-016-0466-7
Siddiqi K, Keding A, Marshall AM, Dogar O, Li J, Huque R, Fatima R, Khan A, Elsey H, Gabe R, Kotz D, Sheikh A. Effect of quitting smoking on health outcomes during treatment for tuberculosis: secondary analysis of the TB & Tobacco Trial. Thorax. 2022 Jan;77(1):74-78. doi: 10.1136/thoraxjnl-2020-215926. Epub 2021 Jul 16. PMID: 34272336.
And for some resources to help train DOTS facilitators , including some in Urdu please see our website: https://tbandtobacco.org/
I hope that helps as a starting point – there is much more out there and many questions that you could explore in more depth in your dissertation.
Please remember again that all dissertations and assignments in our university are checked in Turnitin software so be aware of that while making the dissertation.
At the moment send me this proposal and then once I get it approved by my supervisor then I am gonna ask you to finish it in a 20 or 25 days at most.
