Master's programme Health Promotion

Programme Directors: 

Introduction

We face urgent and complex challenges, such as rising chronic diseases, mental health problems, health inequalities, climate-related health risks, and the growing impact of unhealthy lifestyles. These demand innovative, evidence-based, and collaborative efforts to realise impactful solutions. In our Health Promotion (HeP) master programme, we train the ‘health promoters of the future’: professionals ready to take on complex challenges and build healthier, more equitable societies. In a world where improving wellbeing goes beyond individual choices and behaviours, this programme also trains students to understand and influence the environments and policies that impact health. 

You’ll learn how to design, implement, and evaluate innovative, evidence-based health promotion programmes that empower people and communities to take control of their health. By combining theory, research, and practice, you’ll develop the skills to turn insights into action, drive sustainable change, and make a real impact on public health. 

A planned and systematic approach to solving real-world health challenges

Maastricht University is a world-renowned expertise centre for Intervention Mapping: a planned and systematic approach that takes you from understanding complex health challenges to designing, implementing, and evaluating impactful interventions and policies. In this programme, you’ll learn to use this approach, giving you the skills, confidence and flexibility to handle any health challenge, from local community issues to global public health crises, and make a difference where it matters most. 

Creating impact through a focus on research, theory, and practice

The HeP programme combines theory, research, and practice to help you become a skilled, evidence-driven, confident health promoter. Each course combines academic insights with hands-on training. You’ll solve real-life health challenges, applying both scientific and practical approaches to complex issues faced by communities and organisations. Portfolio-based assessment supports your academic, professional and personal development through goal-setting, coaching, and reflection. With opportunities to conduct research and gain experience in both academic and practical settings, you’ll graduate ready to tackle pressing health challenges and create lasting impact.

Employability

We emphasise the development of important skills that are valued in the labour market. Our educational system, which focuses on small-scale educational activities, promoting autonomy in students, and stimulating collaborative learning in groups, trains you to function independently, plan your work efficiently, and communicate and collaborate effectively. HeP staff members have extensive networks, which allows for the contribution of eminent scientific experts and practitioners, as tutors, lecturers and research supervisors. Each year, we organise a career event where we invite alumni, currently working in the field, to create networking opportunities 

Your future

The HeP programme focuses on understanding and influencing both behaviour and the environments that shape it, empowering you to create lasting change at individual, community, and societal levels. You’ll learn to design and lead initiatives that promote health and wellbeing across diverse settings, such as schools, workplaces, healthcare institutions, and communities, and among groups like children, adolescents, employees, patients, and vulnerable populations. Graduates find career opportunities in a wide range of organisations, including health institutes, consultancies, insurance companies, government agencies, and academia. Many students secure meaningful positions as experts in the field, who turn their knowledge and skills into real-world impact.