We, Elena Rocca and Rani Lill Anjum, are now debating whether to establish a new CauseHealth teaching course. The course would be directed at health professionals and others who might be interested in learning more about causality, complexity and evidence for health sciences from a philosophy of science perspective.
In the last years, we have both been teaching and presenting CauseHealth material to various health professionals, but we think the time is right to offer something more structured, available, flexible and predictable.
Course themes could include (but please suggest more):
- Philosophical bias (basic implicit assumptions) in health sciences and how they influence healthcare practice
- The clinical squeeze between populations and the unique individual
- Complexity, reductionism, and the biomedical model
- Risk and safety as statistical frequencies or individual propensities
- Ontological and epistemological tensions between evidence based and person centered practice
- Why one size does not fit all in healthcare
- Other ideas?
Possible formats could be (but please suggest other):
- Digitally available course material + 2 or 3 weekends or evenings with online lectures and group discussions (3 hours each)
- An offer of smaller modules where one can choose one or more micro-courses (4 hours each, plus some reading and preparations)
- An intensive course that runs over 3 days
- A flexible course that runs over 3 months
- Other alternatives?
We would love to hear from you if you think this could be interesting, and what content and formats could be more suitable or relevant.
When it comes to expected costs, Norwegian continuous education is not very expensive, since the norm is that education is free of charge. But for continuous education, a fee of 400-700 Euros would be quite standard, since the universities will have to cover the expenses for course administration and teaching.
Access to all course material (articles, books, etc.) would be open access or included in the fee.
Causality, Complexity and Evidence in Health Sciences 
A course for health professionals (and PhD candidates / ECRs!) would be excellent. All the topics seem relevant and useful, especially complexity and reductionism. The intensive course format (3+ days) sounds best!
On Thu, May 28, 2026 at 4:33 PM Causality, Complexity and Evidence
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