Contact Us

Staff

Public health perspective offered to undergraduates for the first time

By Tim Stoddard

Last fall's anthrax scare focused attention on the nation's public health system, but few Americans really understand what public health practitioners do, says Arthur Culbert, an associate professor in the School of Public Health. To make the field of public health more accessible to undergraduates, Culbert and several SPH faculty will teach the first broad survey course offered by SPH in its 25-year history.

	Arthur Culbert Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

Open to juniors and seniors of any major, Introduction to Public Health will present the history, science, and scope of public health in the context of the AIDS pandemic, bioterrorist attacks, and other timely health problems.
"Nationwide, there seems to be increased interest among undergraduates in the issues surrounding public and community health," says Culbert. At Johns Hopkins University, public health has recently become the second most popular major among undergraduates, he adds, and both Tufts and Brown will offer bachelor's degrees in public health for the first time this fall.

When Culbert started planning the course last May, his goal was to present the techniques and principles of public health through real-world examples. The unfolding history of AIDS in this country will be used to introduce basic statistics and epidemiology. Lisa Sullivan, a 2001 Metcalf Award winner, an HIV expert, and an SPH associate professor of biostatistics and epidemiology, will coteach this section with Culbert, guiding students to interpret summary data, quantify associations between exposure and illness, and interpret clinical and statistical significance.

How public health officials prepare for, prevent, and respond to a bioterrorist attack will be addressed by Anita Barry (SPH'88), director of the Boston Public Health Commission's Department of Communicable Disease Control, who is involved in Boston's Bioterrorism Surveillance Project. Two other prominent Bay State public health officials, Alan Balsam (SPH'82), commissioner of public health for the town of Brookline, and Howard Koh (SPH'95), commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and a professor at the Schools of Medicine and Public Health, will discuss citizens' responsibility in preventing acts of bioterrorism.

"I think this class will help students understand what role they need to play in the post-9/11 world," Culbert says. "Young people need to be vigilant, certainly in regard to bioterrorism, but more importantly in regard to their own health and the health of their community."


The social justice philosophy of public health will be an underlying theme throughout the course. "There's a balance between individual rights and collective responsibility that needs to be maintained, and the course is going to wrestle with the question of where you draw the line," Culbert says. For instance, should the federal and state governments have the power to require all citizens to receive smallpox vaccinations? Should an individual have the right to refuse a vaccination if it endangers the health of other citizens? Before the class tackles these questions, Patricia Roche, an SPH assistant professor of health law, will present the landmark 1905 court case that established the scope of states' powers in vaccination policy.

The course will also address the role of social and behavioral sciences in public health. To explore how socioeconomic status and race affect an individual's health, one class will focus on the unusually high breast-cancer mortality rates of African-American women in Mattapan. In a separate session, students will discuss the issue of drinking on campus and the public health problems arising from alcohol abuse. After defining the scope of the multifaceted problem, students will weigh the effectiveness of educating versus regulating people to behave in healthier ways.

"I think it's [the School of Public Health's] responsibility to introduce students to this field," Culbert says, "because for many students it may turn them on to a career that they hadn't considered before."

8 March 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations