Welcome to this course on the aetiology, epidemiology and interventions for non-communicable diseases of the Global Diseases Masterclass. We’ve selected four disease areas and will go through each in turn. The diseases we’ve chosen are: Colorectal Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease (CVD), Dementia, and Diabetes. We have selected these non-communicable diseases because they span a range of different types of disease process and because of the expertise and experience that our School of Public Health has in these areas. This will provide an introduction to a few of the of most important global non-communicable disease challenges while also providing variation in aetiology, epidemiology and interventions to learn from. We hope that by the end of this course you will be able to describe the basics of the disease aetiology, global epidemic trends and the available interventions. We also hope you’ll be able to use this information to critique public health approaches and policy positions for the four non-communicable diseases we’ve covered as well helping you extend to further disease areas.