Maastricht University, Faculty of Health, Medicine & Life Sciences
Master Health Promotion
Maastricht, Netherlands
MSc
DURATION
2 years
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time, Part time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
EARLIEST START DATE
Sep 2026
TUITION FEES
EUR 25,100 *
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
* for full-time non-EU/EEA students | €2695 - for full-time EU/EEA students | €12,550 - for part-time non-EU/EEA students | €1,918 - for part-time EU/EEA students
Key Summary
Design, implement, and evaluate innovative, evidence-based interventions to create healthy environments and empower people and communities to live healthier lives. By combining theory, research, and practice, you’ll be ready to realise sustainable change.
The right programme for you?
- Curious how environment, policy and behaviour shape health and wellbeing?
- Enthusiastic about designing and implementing health-promotion programmes?
- Do you want to make an impact and drive real and sustainable change?
Your future
- Do you want to work as a health advisor, consultant or project manager?
- Or start as a PhD candidate or researcher in health promotion?
- Do you want to design solutions for urgent and complex health challenges?
Good to know
- You'll obtain a Master of Science (MSc) degree.
- This is a one-year, full-time programme or a two-year, part-time programme.
- Applications for Health Promotion are processed via Studielink under the former programme name, Health Education and Promotion.
A planned and systematic approach to solving real-world health challenges
Maastricht University is a global leader in training future health promoters to think critically, act strategically, and make a lasting impact on wellbeing and health. In this programme, you’ll learn to master a planned and systematic, evidence-based approach.
You'll go from understanding complex, real-world health challenges to designing, implementing, and evaluating impactful interventions and policies. This hands-on, structured way of working gives you the confidence and flexibility to tackle any health challenge - from local community issues to global public health crises - and truly make a difference where it matters most.
Create impact through a focus on research, theory, and practice
The HeP programme combines research, theory, and practice to help you become a skilled, evidence-driven, confident health promoter. Each course combines academic insights with hands-on training. You’ll tackle 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 real-world health challenges and create meaningful, lasting impact.
Become the health promoter of the 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, and neighbourhoods, 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.
This programme is for you if:
- you have a keen interest in understanding how environment, policies and behaviours shape health and wellbeing.
- you are passionate about designing, implementing and evaluating health-promoting programmes.
- you want to make an impact and contribute to real and sustainable change.
The Maastricht University (UM) NL-High Potential Scholarship programme offers 21 full scholarships of € 34,000 (including tuition fee waiver and monthly stipend) each academic year for highly talented students from outside the European Union (EU) who have been admitted to a master’s programme at UM.
The Scholarship programme consists of both the High Potential Scholarship (funded by the Maastricht University Scholarship Fund) and the NL Scholarship, which is financed by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in conjunction with Dutch universities and universities of applied sciences. It is aimed at international students from outside the EU/EEA who wish to follow a full degree programme in the Netherlands.
Please visit our website for more information.
- Understanding Health Behaviour
- Changing Health Behaviour
- Intervention Development
- Reviewing Evidence for Health Promotion Practice
- Preparation for Scientific Research
- Implementation and Evaluation
- Health Promotion
- Scientific Research and Article
After you’ve completed the master's programme in Health Education and Promotion, you'll be an expert in promoting health and well-being. You could pursue a career at health institutes, consultancies, insurance companies, governments and academia. Experience shows that all students rapidly find good jobs, sometimes even before graduation.
Career Paths
Health institutes
At regional, national and international health institutes, Health Education and Promotion graduates can be found working on both preventative and awareness campaigns. But they also work on intervention development and help evaluate health education strategies.
Consultancy
At consultancies, graduates provide national and international organisations with advice on how to develop health interventions or improve health education strategies.
Governments
Some Health Education and Promotion graduates opt for a career working for a local or national government, where they work on a broad range of health initiatives, ranging from the prevention of infectious diseases to healthy diets and exercise promotion campaigns.
Academia
The programme will also provide you with a solid scientific background. A career as a PhD student will therefore also be open to you.
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. To realise impactful solutions to these challenges, we need innovative, evidence-based and collaborative efforts. In our Health Promotion (HeP) master's programme, we are invested in training ‘health promoters of the future’: professionals ready to tackle complex challenges and build healthier, more equitable societies. Improving well-being goes beyond individual choices and behaviours. That's why 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.