Evidence-Based Decision Making in Public Health: Capacity Building for Public Health Students at King Saud University in Riyadh

Table 1

Core courses for evidence-based public health MPH/SBCM curricula.

Course	Description	Competences learned
Basic evidence-based healthcare	The course describes the basic concepts of evidence-based decision making, type of evidence, and sources for evidence in public health	(i) Searching the main biomedical literature databases; (ii) Basic evaluation of evidence according to study design and relevance to public health problems
Advanced evidence-based healthcare	The course introduces the students to critical appraisal of the main study designs; in addition it introduces systematic reviews, practice guidelines, and policy briefs	Evaluating and summarizing the evidence
Systematic review	The course is in depth teaching on how to use evidence from systematic reviews for decision making. It includes quantifying the public health problem by using local data, formulating answerable question for effective intervention, searching for relevant systematic reviews, critically appraising the systematic review, and deciding on the impact of the intervention and if that impact is expected to address the public health problem.	(i) Searching and evaluating relevant systematic review for intervention; (ii) Assessing the applicability of the intervention to address the local health problem