Course Overview:

This course provides a multidisciplinary, multi-scale exploration of the complexity that is global health. Beginning with an examination of the systems that surround and influence health and disease, we will then study communicable and non-communicable diseases and end with an examination of the ethical and moral questions that arise when we try to influence health and disease in the world. We will explore determinants of health throughout the semester, examining when and how global, national, local, and individual factors influence health outcomes. Throughout the semester, students will complete journal entries, papers, and handwritten, in-class exams to engage meaningfully with the interdisciplinary, often thorny questions that arise when we think deeply about health and disease around the world, such as: Who gets sick and who doesn’t? Who gets care and who doesn’t?  Does being sick mean the same thing to everyone? Or being healthy? Why?  Upon completion of this class, students will be well-prepared to engage in critical inquiry related to global public health, with thoughtful awareness of their own interests and place within this field and how they can meaningfully contribute to improving health and health equity globally.

Course Objectives:

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Ask thoughtful, critiquing questions about the complex interplay of biological, socioeconomic, geopolitical, cultural, environmental, and ethical factors that influence health and disease globally
• Describe and interrogate the interplay among determinants of health at global, national, local, and individual levels, including an awareness of how these determinants impact the resilience and functioning of any given health system
• Compare and contrast communicable and non-communicable diseases, exhibiting basic understanding of global burden of disease, including morbidity and mortality, as well as modes of transmission (as applicable), prevention, diagnosis, and treatment
• Examine the motivations behind what we describe as the field of global health, including the student’s own interests in and place within this field, while exhibiting an awareness of neocolonialism, research and practice ethics, and global health (in)equity