Courses

The course descriptions below are correct to the best of our knowledge as of April 2016. Instructors reserve the right to update and/or otherwise alter course descriptions as necessary after publication. The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. The Course Rotation Guide lists the expected semester a course will be taught. Please refer to the published schedule of classes for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times. In addition to the courses listed in the Bulletin and courses approved after April 1, SPH degree candidates may register for a directed (independent) study with a full-time SPH faculty member. For more information, speak with your faculty advisor or a staff member in the SPH Registrar’s office.

• SPH GH 811: Applied Research Methods in Global Health
  The objective of this course is to teach student teams how to collect and analyze data to answer research questions and evaluate health interventions. Student teams will conduct a research study with multiple research methods including a cross-sectional survey and their choice from a variety of qualitative methods. The scope of the research questions addressed will be limited to minimal risk research conducted with students on the Boston University Medical Campus in the space of a semester. Each team will design a questionnaire, administer it, and enter and analyze the data using R. In conjunction with the cross-sectional survey, each team will also use some form of qualitative method, such as in-depth interviews or focus group discussions. The student teams will integrate the results of the cross-sectional survey and the qualitative research and present a report with findings and recommendations to their peers and faculty members. Students completing the course will have the skills to be able to collect and analyze data in a wide variety of settings.
• SPH GH 815: Methods for Impact Evaluation
  This four-credit course provides students with a set of theoretical and methodological skills to evaluate the causal impacts of public health programs and policies. Students learn to use a broad range of evaluation methodologies, including experimental and quasi-experimental designs. They strengthen their skills through critical analysis of published evaluation research. They also apply their skills to design an ideal impact evaluation for an intervention or program of their own choosing. Students taking this course should already be competent in understanding and applying basic quantitative methods for public health research. This is a Third Level course intended for MPH students enrolled in the Monitoring and Evaluation Certificate, and these students are given priority for enrollment. Other interested students may enroll, space permitting.
• SPH GH 854: From Data to Dashboards: Building Excel Skills to Support Health Program Decisions
  In these uncertain times, managers need, more than ever, to make sound decisions based on data. Good spreadsheet models are important tools in this process. Build your Excel "toolbox" by learning and applying robust formulas, graphing and dashboarding techniques, and data analysis in a wide range of real-world case study examples, such as cost and utilization analysis, estimation of revenues and expenses, and performance dashboards to monitor and evaluate performance of health interventions. Students will have the opportunity to build their own models to apply to a health service challenge of their choosing. This course is appropriate for upper level MPH students who have basic excel skills.
• SPH GH 880: Confronting non-communicable diseases in the developing world: the burden, costs and health systems challenges
  A combination of lower fertility rates and changing environmental factors and lifestyles has led to aging populations and epidemics of tobacco addiction, obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes, and other chronic ailments, aggravating the persisting burden of infectious diseases in the developing world. This advanced course aims at providing a thorough understanding of the risk factors, epidemiology, burden, and economic consequences of the most prevalent non-communicable diseases and the fundamental policy considerations regarding intervention strategies for their prevention and control in resource constrained settings. This overall goal will be achieved by marrying economic approaches with those of epidemiology, clinical medicine and public health.
• SPH GH 881: Global Reproductive and Perinatal Health
  This course addresses the major reproductive and perinatal health problems facing communities around the world. We will focus on current strategies to address human reproduction, maternal health and the health of newborns. For each problem, we will consider the fundamental causes and possible solutions--what works/doesn't work and what is being tried. Topics will include determinants of maternal mortality, Perinatal Mortality, conditions that impact pregnancy outcomes, major causes of global maternal mortality, programming, policy and advocacy.
• SPH GH 885: Global Trade, Intellectual Property, and Public Health
  On the broadest level, any person interested in global public health needs to know about globalization and trade. Globalization rewards creative and technically skilled workers and places its largest pressures on lower-skilled workers. A specific example of globalization is that of India and their embrace of new intellectual property (IP) laws. The implementation of these IP and trade rules lies somewhere between outright opposition to reforming global IP rules and an unthinking acceptance that doing so will encourage biomedical innovation and improved health outcomes. The effects of stronger IP standards on health and innovation in medicines and diagnostics are ambiguous and thus need to be subjected to empirical analysis. This course will explore the complex and ambiguous relationship between global trade, intellectual property and its impact on public health.
• SPH GH 887: Planning and Managing MCH Programs in Developing Countries
  This course provides a practical framework to enable students to design, manage, and evaluate services for children and women, with an emphasis on child health. The course covers the major health challenges with a focus on children and explores specific interventions to address these challenges. Topics covered include diarrheal disease, acute respiratory infection, immunization, malaria, micronutrient deficiencies, HIV/AIDS, safe motherhood and neonatal health. The final six weeks of the course will give students the opportunity to identify the technical, political, organizational, and environmental factors necessary for a successful program. Students will work in teams to respond to an RFP for improving the health of women, children, or newborns in a developing country. Teams will attend a bidder's conference and then prepare and present a written and oral proposal to an outside grants committee. Students cannot take both IH744 and IH887 for MPH degree credit.
• SPH GH 888: Seminar on Global Health Policy Issues
  This seminar focuses on policy formulation related to public health problems in low- and middle-income countries and is intended for students who have some experience. How is policy formulated in different settings? Who sets the policy agenda? Why do some issues get the attention of policy-makers, while other equally important issues fail to gain traction? And what approaches can be used to improve the chances of a particular policy being adopted? Students will carry out a policy analysis on a policy issue of their choice, using the policy analysis approaches and tools presented in class.
• SPH GH 891: Global Pharmaceutical Policy: At the Intersection of Process and Politics
  Health care organizations need to provide viable and sustainable solutions to the many problems confronting them while balancing the often inconsistent and opposing agendas and interests of stakeholders. GH891 introduces the student to the real world of pharmaceutical policy making in global health. Students will analyze medicines issues at the intersection of policy, process and politics. Students will develop skills in pharmaceutical policy analysis through case studies, lectures, and discussion.
• SPH GH 941: Directed Studies in Global Health
  Directed Studies provide the opportunity for students to explore a special topic of interest under the direction of a full-time SPH faculty member. Students may register for a 1, 2, 3, or 4-credit directed study by submitting an add/drop form and a signed directed study proposal form. Students who are completing the culminating experience project must register for GH943. Directed studies with a non-SPH faculty member or an adjunct faculty member must be approved by and assigned to the department chair. Students are placed in a section by the Registrars Office according to the faculty member with whom they are working. Students may take no more than eight credits of directed study, directed research, or practica courses during their MPH education.
• SPH GH 942: Directed Research in Global Health
  This course provides the opportunity for advanced students to become involved in global health research of a public health nature or to undertake research independently. Arrangements are made with the appropriate full time GH faculty member. Students must submit an add/drop form and a directed research proposal form signed by the supervising faculty. Directed research is a graded, variable credit course (1, 2, 3, or 4 credits). Students may complete a maximum of 8 directed study, directed research or practicum credits during their MPH program.
• SPH GH 943: Global Health Directed Study for Culminating Experience
  Students who must complete a directed study for their Global Health Culminating Experience register for IH943 with their culminating experience advisor. Students who select Option Two, the journal article, must register for a 2-credit directed study. Other students may choose a 1-credit directed study if appropriate and approved by the Global Health Department. Registration in GH943 is via a proposal form and an add/drop form. Registration is not online.
• SPH GH 950: Culminating Experience in Global Health I
  Zero-credit option for completing the required culminating experience in global health. Students may register in fall, spring, or summer. Students must select a culminating experience option, complete the required documents with the Academic Services Coordinator, and register online for the class. Registering accords the student part-time status. Students who do not finish their culminating experience in the semester in which they registered for IH950 must register for IH951 in the next semester.
• SPH GH 951: Culminating Experience in Global Health II
  Students who do not finish their culminating experience in the semester in which they registered for IH950 must register for IH951 in the next semester. IH950 and IH951 are zero-credit options for completing the required culminating experience in global health. Students may register in fall, spring, or summer. Students must select a culminating experience option, complete the required documents with the Academic Services Coordinator, and register online for the class. Registering accords the student part-time status.
• SPH LW 709: Healthcare Rationing: Medicine, Markets and Morals
  Although health care is rationed in a variety of ways in the United States, Americans, and American politicians in particular, make believe that rationing does not exist. Indeed, efforts at health care reform have often been criticized for leading to "rationing' health care resources, implying that rationing is something evil. The idea that all Americans get the health care they need or that we have limitless resources is obviously not so. What health care is available and to whom is the result of the often invisible choices policy makers make. This course critically explores the health care allocation choices that have been made and will be made in the future. It analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of various rationing methods, the values and moral judgments reflected in each, and the political and financial factors influencing the choice of approach, as well as who should make such choices. Examples of rationing to be discussed include the distribution of organs for transplantation, determining what constitutes "necessary" care under insurance schemes, the use of markets and lotteries as rationing methods, limitations on population screening, the use of age and "social worth" to limit health care to individuals, triage in emergencies, and the utility (or disutility) of cost-benefit analysis for making decisions about the availability and distribution of health care. By the end of the course, students will be able to articulate the range of possible rationing methods and to appropriately apply these methods to different scarce resource circumstances.
• SPH LW 725: Ethical Issues in Medicine and Public Health
  This course reviews the nature and scope of moral dilemmas and problematic decision making in public health, medicine, and health care. After a survey of ethical theory, the course focuses on a broad range of ethical concerns raised by the theory and practice of public health and medicine: the nature of health, disease and illness, health promotion and disease prevention; rights, access, and the limits of health care; the physician-patient relationship; truthtelling and confidentiality. Through a series of case studies, the course examines specific topics: the bioethics movement and its critiques; human experimentation; the role of institutional review boards; the concept and exercise of informed, voluntary consent; abortion, reproduction, genetic counseling and screening; euthanasia, death and dying; ethics committees; and international and cross-cultural perspectives.
• SPH LW 739: Jewish Bioethics and Holocaust Studies
  The aim of this course is to provide an introduction to resources for and approaches to Jewish biomedical ethics. Selected issues will be studied in some depth to develop the ability to interpret relevant primary sources and evaluate competing readings of these sources. Attention will be given to different approaches in interpreting and applying Jewish texts and values in addressing contemporary issues. We will then focus on medical ethics and the Holocaust. The historical experience of the Holocaust has had a major impact on contemporary Jewish ethicists. We will examine the relevance of the Nazi doctors, racial hygiene, euthanasia, and genocide for contemporary bioethics. The field of Jewish bioethics affords us the opportunity to explore the complex interface of philosophy, theology, halakha (Jewish law), and secular law and ethics. Students will also consider philosophical approaches in bioethics and their significance for Judaism. This course is taught with CAS RN 439/ GRS RN 739/ STH TX859 at Charles River Campus.
• SPH LW 740: Health and Human Rights
  This course is appropriate for graduate, 4+1, and undergraduate students and is taught at the Medical Campus. Health is closely linked to the realization of human rights. Preventable illness, infant mortality, and premature death, for example, are closely tied to societal discrimination and violation of human rights. This course explores the relationship between human rights and health by examining relevant international declarations in historical context, exploring the meaning of "human rights" and "health," and analyzing specific case studies that illuminate the problems, prospects, and potential methods of promoting health by promoting human rights on the national and international levels.
• SPH LW 830: Health Insurance and the Affordable Care Act
  This seminar offers an in-depth examination of the pivotal role of public and private insurance in US health policy. Health insurance pays for almost all health care in the US, strongly influencing (often dictating) who gets what care and on what terms. The class explores how the Affordable Care Act affects the design, operation, and regulation of health benefit plans, including Medicare, Medicaid, employer-sponsored group plans, and commercial insurance. Investigating contemporary regulations, students learn fundamentals of insurance, where reforms do and do not alter such fundamentals, and whether reforms affect larger principles of law. Topics include state and federal regulation; ERISA plan requirements; ERISA preemption of certain state laws; accepting, managing and shifting financial risk; designing health insurance exchanges; contracting with providers, Accountable Care Organizations, employers, and individuals; designing and administering plans; defining benefits, including Essential Health Benefits; appeals and remedies; and state adaptations of health insurance exchanges, subsidy wrap-arounds, risk corridors, and Medicaid expansions.
• SPH LW 840: Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights
  Health law, bioethics, and human rights are converging in challenging ways, especially at the national level (in both legislation and constitutional adjudication), and the international law level. This seminar will explore the convergence and its meaning for the law and society through specific case studies including post-9/11 proposals for mass quarantine; torture and force-feeding justifications in the GWOT; genetic engineering and the new reproductive technologies; the relationship between abortion and the death penalty; and the meaning of the ?right to health.? This class is taught at BU School of Public Health and meets the Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights Department captone requirement.

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