International Health
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SPH IH 702: Skills in Critical Analysis and Evidence Based Writing for Public Health Professionals
This introductory course will develop students? abilities to read the public health literature critically and to integrate evidence into a well-crafted policy memo. The class will focus on critical analysis of a case study focused on two research articles analyzing interventions to prevent HIV transmission. Through in-class discussions students will explore why the studies drew different conclusions. Course assignments will allow students to hone the applied critical analysis and writing skills they will need as public health professionals. -
SPH IH 703: Global Public Health: History, Approaches and Practices
?If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants?. Sir Isaac Newton, 15 February 1676. As public health professionals, we stand on the shoulders of giants. This course has two major goals --- to welcome incoming the MPH class into membership in the professional social movement called public health and to expose you to the rich historical tradition of the profession you have chosen. We will introduce you to the history of public health and connect those historical events to current global health practice and issues. Using selected public health case studies and through a review of selected leaders and heroes/heroines we will highlight a selection of extraordinary individuals and events. These case studies will examine the complexities and the importance of heroes/heroines and mentors. We will ensure that all the incoming MPH students have a functional literacy of the current global health architecture and understand the politics of priority-setting and decision-making. The course will address issues of human rights, individual rights, population rights and ethics. Intended for new International Health concentrators or students interested in International Health; not for students who have completed IH700 or PH511 or IH771 in fall 2008. -
SPH IH 704: International Public Health and Medical Care: A Systems Approach
This course gives students an understanding of the elements common to all medical care systems and the factors which influence the shape, cost, performance, and quality of health systems. Examples are drawn from countries whose wealth and stage of development vary widely. The interaction between the public and private components of the health sector is explored. Equity in health services is a crosscutting theme. Students learn about the organization, delivery, and financing of medical care and the strengths and weaknesses of alternative approaches to health care finance and delivery. The major problems in health care facing low- and middle-income countries and the strategic options available to these countries are addressed. The course is taught in an interactive lecture format. There is an emphasis on systems thinking and systems approach. All International Health concentrators, MPH students who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents of the U.S., and MI program students may take this class. HPM concentrators must take PM702. Students who have taken PM702 for MPH degree credit may enroll in IH704 as an MPH elective. IH concentrators are given preference in registration but registration is open. -
SPH IH 707: Kenya Field Practicum in Public Health and Environment
This 5-week course in Kenya focuses on environmental and community health as it relates to the indigenous Maasai residing at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. In the early 1980s Kenya began a process of privatizing open grazing land into group ranches. This significant land use change has forced traditionally nomadic peoples, including the Maasai, onto smaller plots of land. This change in lifestyle has been associated with a rise in sanitation-related and water-borne diseases, infant and childhood disease and HIV/AIDS. Participants in the Kenya Field Practicum will be trained in field-based data collection, analysis, report-writing and presentation skills. Past summer sessions have collected baseline information on water and sanitation practices, community health indicators and worked with local organizations to evaluate the success of health interventions. Results and recommendations are presented to local Maasai leaders and other stakeholders. Contact Joe Anzalone for information regarding application, travel, and related information. The course also fulfills the BUSPH field practicum requirement if students also complete two skills-based professional development seminars. -
SPH IH 715: Antiretroviral Program Management and Adherence Issues in Low-Resource Settings
Successful HIV/AIDS treatment programs rely on consistent, uninterrupted supplies of antiretrovirals (ARVs), appropriate ARV prescribing, retention of patients in treatment programs, and a high level of adherence by patients. Ineffective ARV management can lead to treatment failures, ARV resistance, and insufficient program uptake. This course provides students with practical knowledge and skills to manage challenges in the areas of ARV selection, pricing, quality, and program monitoring and evaluation. Guest lecturers with relevant expertise will be invited to speak on several specific topics. One session will be devoted to a field visit to an adherence clinic to learn directly about the ARV program management issues faced by practitioners and patients. -
SPH IH 720: Social and Behavioral Sciences in International Public Health
Public health professionals know what behaviors contribute to health; however, they know less about why people fail to adopt healthy practices. This course is based on the premise that the more we understand about why people behave the way they do, the more successful we will be as we develop and implement programs and policies designed to improve health. This course uses psychology, sociology and anthropology to improve our understanding of the determinants of health behavior and will provide an introduction to a variety of health behavior theories and basic qualitative research methods. Our intent is to develop practical strategies for understanding the social and behavioral foundations of public health, enabling us to plan effective interventions. Working individually and in groups, students will use conceptual frameworks such as BEHAVE to help identify a public health problem, select a target audience, conduct basic qualitative research to determine facilitators and barriers to engaging in a given practice, and propose several behavior change and communications (BCC) strategies based on an assessment of the situation. This course is intended to provide students a foundation for future coursework in program design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The three sections of IH 720 that are offered in the Fall (as well as SB 721) focus more heavily on the contributions of psychology and sociology while the Spring section emphasizes anthropology. All IH concentrators and international, nonresident students who are not SB concentrators may substitute IH 720 for the behavioral sciences MPH core requirement, SB 721. Students who have taken SB 721 may not take this course for degree credit. Preference is given to IH concentrators for registration. -
SPH IH 731: Leadership & Negotiations
It is surprisingly difficult to lead, structure, maintain, reinvigorate and negotiate one's way through organizations, especially during times of downsizing, change, and uncertainty. This course investigates how to do so by drawing on a variety of interdisciplinary approaches. Students enhance their skills in collaborative problem solving and leadership by analyzing and proposing solutions to organizational and managerial challenges. Core topics are drawn from a continuum of current issues facing leaders and followers, such as leadership styles, conflict resolution, and negotiations. Case studies, practical experiential exercises, and self-discovery questionnaires are used throughout this course. Students are required to do a presentation & a research paper. -
SPH IH 733: Managing Teams and Groups for the New or Emerging Leader
Every leader, manager, or supervisor undoubtedly has many goals to achieve and roles to fulfill. One major challenge is to successfully work with various internal and external groups and constituencies. Meetings with task forces, staffs, district health boards, relief camp workers, NGOs, community, and governmental groups, and facilitating retreats are just a few of the opportunities for an effective leader/facilitator to impact an audience. These tasks require that person to call upon skills and knowledge in positive interpersonal relations, effective problem analysis, negotiation and conflict resolution, giving positive and negative feedback, and motivating civil service employees. This course is designed to equip students with these skills that are necessary to work effectively as a member and as a leader/facilitator of teams. To acquire these skills, each student will have the opportunity to form and lead a team to present at least one case. In addition, each student will gain practice facilitating group exercises. -
SPH IH 735: Gender, Sexuality, Power, & Inequity in International Health
This course explores the socio-cultural, economic and political contexts in which people live their lives and how these, and local and large-scale forces of structural violence (inequity, marginalization and gender discrimination) impact health and development. Course readings and discussions examine how these forces constitute immediate and fundamental risk factors and must therefore be considered and addressed as part of any effort to improve public health. Course format: seminar with topics introduced by professor and guest lecturers. -
SPH IH 743: Implementing Health Programs in Developing Countries: Making Programs Work
As professionals working in low and middle income countries, we often end up running programs we did not design, which are under-financed, and which face enormous implementation challenges. In this course, students will work with a specifically identified health program that is currently being implemented and conduct systems analyses, undertake problem solving exercises, and propose solutions to real implementation challenges in the field. Ultimately they will be able to prioritize the interventions necessary to effectively run a complex health program in such diverse situations as urban slums and dispersed rural areas in developing countries and be prepared to plan the actions to effectively run those programs. This course is directed towards students in the health management emphasis area and is not suitable for students in their first semester of studies. Students who will particularly benefit from this course are foreign nationals returning to their own countries and U.S.citizens or residents who will provide technical assistance through NGOs or other agencies to implement existing health programs. -
SPH IH 744: Program Design for International Health
Developing a structured approach to program design is an important skill for public health professionals. IH744 provides an opportunity to learn and apply the key steps of program design. The course invites students to work with an international non-governmental organization to design a public health program. The non-governmental organization will orient student consultant teams with a scope of work that will contain guidelines for developing a program for the organization and identifying prospective donors for funding. To complete the scope of work, each team will identify and describe a relevant public health problem and apply evidenced based solutions to address the problem(s). Course work will also sharpen the knowledge and the skills required for working effectively in a team and students will learn to reflect on individual and team performance. Students will be introduced to e-portfolio and will use it to document their knowledge and skills in program design. -
SPH IH 745: Monitoring and Evaluation of International Health Programs
There is consensus within the international public health community that inadequate project monitoring and evaluation (M&E) represents a major constraint in programmatic efforts to address the problems we face. The absence of sound M&E processes in large numbers of public health projects, despite continued evidence of their value in assessing and improving project performance, suggests that many project planners and managers may not yet have the necessary skills or understanding to develop and operate such systems. This course is designed to help address this need. This course provides a detailed analysis of program monitoring and evaluation with an emphasis on public health and nutrition-related projects. By reading relevant literature and using case studies, students will gain an understanding of the language and tools of program evaluation. The course will focus both on theory and practical utilization, and will consist of presentations, discussions, and applied exercises involving the preparation and critiquing of monitoring and evaluation plans. -
SPH IH 752: The Effect of Gender on Men's Health: A Global Perspective
Although "gender and health" is often assumed to refer to women's health, men's gender roles have serious effects on their health, worldwide. In this course, we will consider the health of men, compared to women, and among men of diverse characteristics and settings. Two major perspectives will be epidemiology and social science. We will explore global patterns of disease and disease risk for men, and the reasons for these patterns, and interventions that might improve men's health. -
SPH IH 753: Beyond Reproductive Health: International Women's Health
While reproductive health problems are major contributors to the burden of disease among women, in this course we will examine a variety of other causes of mortality and morbidity among women in developing countries. We will also investigate the many ways in which social factors affect women?s exposure to health hazards and access to health care. Topics will include occupational health, smoking, mental health, infectious and chronic diseases, and violence. This course is suitable for new MPH students. -
SPH IH 755: Managing Disasters and Complex Humanitarian Emergencies
This course will provide students with a solid introductory understanding of disasters and complex emergencies and introduce practical responses and interventions. By the end of the course, students will be able to describe human and natural emergencies and their main causes, articulate and conduct public health assessments, prioritize needs, and plan immediate and long-term interventions. Class discussions will also focus on analyzing and anticipating the consequences of emergencies. -
SPH IH 757: Fighting Corruption Through Accountability & Transparency
Corruption and lack of accountability in government are concerns in all countries, but they are especially critical problems in developing and transitioning countries where public resources are already scarce and corruption can cripple growth and development. In international health work, most public health practitioners will encounter corruption at some point and will need to make ethical and management decisions about how to work within corrupt systems and how to prevent corruption from occurring. This course is designed to introduce participants to the problem of corruption and provide them with skills for assessing vulnerabilities to corruption in the health sector. Topics covered include corruption risks in drug procurement and supply, medical conflicts of interest, informal payments, and financial corruption. Participants will acquire the confidence, knowledge, and skills needed to become effective advocates for anti-corruption strategies and health system reforms. -
SPH IH 758: Mental Health in Disaster Settings
War and violent conflict inflict significant mental trauma on survivors: people living in post-conflict settings are exposed to constant stresses in their daily life and are often subjected to violence, sexual assault, imprisonment and torture. The effects may persist for years afterward, leading to substance abuse, depression, social and economic difficulties or suicide. Incidents of genocide, mass murder or starvation are particularly damaging to the human psyche. This course will cover the goals and structure of emergency programs that attend to the mental health needs of survivors of violent conflict, from the point of view of the program manager, but including an overview of the psychology of trauma and of the principle psychotherapeutic techniques used in the field by disaster relief agencies. Students will be introduced to variables affecting vulnerability and resilience including age, gender, culture and role?as relief workers, soldiers, perpetrators, etc. Participants will also learn about emergency interventions with severe stress reactions and preventative care to avert long-term problems, and how to plan for, implement, monitor, and evaluate mental health interventions and psychosocial programs for communities that have suffered collectively. -
SPH IH 762: Essentials of Economics and Finance for International Health
This course is an introduction to the essential concepts and tools of health economics and financing with application to the particular challenges facing transitional and developing countries. The course does not assume prior training in economics and will provide an introduction to the conceptual underpinnings of health economics, highlighting those concepts that will be most useful in applied policy settings. Case studies will focus on practical application to current international health financing policy problems. -
SPH IH 766: Reproductive & Sexual Health in Disaster Settings
Of the millions of people displaced by armed conflict around the world, 65-80% are women and children. In recent armed conflicts, women have been the targets of exploitation, rape, forced marriage, forced pregnancy, and other types of gender-based violence. These violent acts have implications on women?s reproductive health. This course will expose students to the issues affecting the reproductive and sexual health of women in conflict and post-conflict situations. The context of recent conflicts and their effects on women?s health will be analyzed. Other topics will include: common reproductive health morbidities in conflict situations, reproductive health assessments, programming, monitoring and evaluations, gender-based violence, and rape as a weapon of war. Specific examples will be drawn from the wars that occurred in former Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Southern Sudan, and the ongoing war in Darfur, Western Sudan. This course complements the Managing Disasters and Complex Humanitarian Emergencies course (IH870). Participants in that course are highly encouraged to enroll in this course. -
SPH IH 770: Poverty, Health, and Development
Poverty, Health and Development is the core International Public Health course for master?s students in the new University-wide Global Development Policy Program. The course also serves as an elective course for students in public health. The goal of this course is for students to explore the relationships between poverty, health, and development in low-income countries. While not a methods course per se, methods in public health, economics, statistics, and quantitative impact evaluation will be introduced and used throughout the course.
