Public Health

This course provides an opportunity for students to become familiar with the concept that humans contain more than just an organized assemblage of mammalian cells. In addition to our human cells, there are numerous microbial inhabitants- many are bacteria. Indeed, on a per-cell basis, these bacteria outnumber human cells by at least an order of magnitude. How resident bacteria interact with one another and with transient (often pathogenic) bacterial species is important to understand because these interactions can promote health or potentially aid the transition towards disease.

Reducing racial/ethnic health disparities is core to the mission of public health. This course provides an in-depth examination of racial/ethnic disparities specific to healthcare and healthcare delivery in the United States.

This course is writing intensive and will critically examine aspects of health and policy reform from state and federal perspective. Taught primarily from a US perspective, topics with an international lens will be covered to explore domestic policy and international implications of policies and structures.

Policy requires politics:  behind every positive or negative decision governments make, there are elected politicians, politically skilled officials, journalists, and other stakeholders.  Understanding the world of politics is crucial to influencing and implementing policies for public health.  Indeed, it is impossible to understand public health policy outside of its political context.  This class presents the basic institutions and politics of contemporary public health policymaking through studies of institutions and contemporary policy debates.  Through analysis of case studies includin