Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the Student Link for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• SPH PH 728: Religion, Ethics, and Public Health
  This course will introduce students to the health related aspects of a variety of Western and Eastern religious and ethical traditions, health controversies that exist within those traditions, methods that can be used to reconcile public health needs with religious and ethical traditions. Through review of case studies, students will be challenged to harmonize public health priorities with cultural beliefs in a way that best serves the community. For example, we will study the religious and ethical controversy inherent in major public health issues such as exemptions to mandatory vaccination laws, sex education in public schools, statues outlawing female genital cutting, life support withdrawal, determination of death, faith healing, fetal stem cell research and allocation of scarce resources. Ultimately, students will generate a robust conceptual framework, enabling a nuanced approach to some of the most critical topics in the field of public health.
• SPH PH 729: Social Network Analysis for Public Health Research
  The overall goal of the course is to provide students with a working knowledge of the basic concepts and measures used to describe and analyze social networks and the ability to understand the results and implications of this body of research. Social network analysis applies graph theory to characterize relationships between networked entities (i.e., people, groups, places, organizations, and/or other units). Social network analysis is used to understand how these relations influence attitudes, beliefs, behaviors; diffusion of ideas and behaviors; the spread of infectious diseases; human mobility patterns; communication and collaborative networks; social media networks; and biological systems, among other things. Although social network analysis has a long history of use in sociology, it is also commonly used in many other scientific disciplines, including anthropology, business, communication, computer science, economics, education, marketing, medicine, public health, political science, psychology, and many others. Within public health, network analysis is commonly applied to the study of social media networks, friendship networks among adolescents, citation and co-authorship networks, road networks, disease transmission networks, risk potential networks (i.e., networks with the potential for disease transmission), networks of gangs or terrorists, global trade networks, genome-wide association networks, phylogenetic networks (i.e., putatively linked infections based on viral sequence similarities), etc. For example, social network analysis can be used to understand the epidemiology of infectious diseases, inform vaccination and quarantine strategies during outbreaks, develop peer-driven interventions to change behavioral norms, employ the use of peer health navigators to find individuals who have dropped out of care and connect them with services, identify new infections via contact tracing, study diffusion of innovations, inform organizational improvements, or develop strategies to provide more coordinated health care services. This course consists of class lectures, group discussions, student presentations, labs, reading materials, and problem sets. Of note, problem sets will include additional higher-level thinking questions which will be mandatory for PhD students and optional for all others taking the class. Data analyses will be conducted using Stata, UCINET and Netdraw software packages.
• SPH PH 731: Analytic Methods and Management Strategies for Public Health Decision Making
  Analytical Methods and Management Strategies for Public Health Decision Making provides students with an overview of key analytical approaches often used in decision making both in environmental and other public health settings, along with the related management strategies. This includes topics such as cost- effectiveness analysis, alternative approaches to assign values to health outcomes, decision theory, risk assessment/management, health impact assessment, alternatives assessment, and sustainability analysis.
• SPH PH 737: Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for Public Health Decision Making
  This course is an introductory level mapping class for a novice Geographic Information Systems (GIS) user, applicable to all public health fields. Topics covered include development of geographical datasets (local, national and global), basic mapping and data analysis, and geographical data presentation. A substantial portion of the course will be devoted to computer lab sessions. The course will use ArcGIS software.
• SPH PH 739: Foundations of Infectious Disease for Public Health
  This is a foundational course in infectious diseases for students pursuing a career in public health practice that involves working to control, prevent, eliminate, and/or eradicate these diseases. In the first week of class, students learn basic principles of infectious disease causation and spread. In subsequent weeks, they apply those principles to analyze how agent, host, and environmental (physical, social, behavioral, cultural, economic, political) factors impact the transmission and clinical course of infection, and contribute to the susceptibility and vulnerability of individuals and populations. Students then use this information to analyze the effectiveness of key public health infectious disease control and prevention strategies, and to identify and propose their own intervention strategies. Through a combination of active learning and problem solving, students recognize that addressing infectious disease problems requires consideration of not only the natural history of a disease, but also policy-based decision making, resources and economics, and the ecological, social behavioral and cultural context of disease settings. They learn that designing and implementing contextually appropriate and effective infectious disease control and prevention interventions requires a multi-disciplinary and multi-sectorial, One Health, approach.
• SPH PH 740: Pharmaceuticals in Public Health: An Introductory Course
  This course provides the students with an overview of the role of pharmaceuticals in public health and the basic functions of the pharmaceutical sector in terms of stakeholders,regulations, policies and evaluation. In addition the course has the objective to introduce the students to the pharmaceutical program and provide them with basic knowledge that is necessary to enter other courses. By the end of the course the students will be able to discuss the relevance of pharmaceuticals for public health, identify relevant actors in the pharmaceutical sector and their functions, to identify problems within the pharmaceutical sector that lead to inequity and inefficiencies and the proposal strategies to overcome these problems.
• SPH PH 746: Career P.R.E.P.
  This career development course is made up of 6 sessions, each 90 minutes long, designed to give you the tools and techniques to effectively market yourself during the job search process and advance in your career. It will also enable you to research potential career options and to manage your job searches and careers as proactively and effectively as possible.
• SPH PH 757: Chronic Disease Prevention and Management
  Chronic, non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic lung disease, are a leading threat to the health of the population. In this course, students will set out to ascertain the background and significance of major chronic diseases affecting population health, and evaluate intervention efforts targeting chronic disease prevention and its long term management. Controversies in current chronic disease prevention efforts will be analyzed. Students are expected to gain skills directly relevant for the development, implementation, and evaluation of interventions directed towards chronic disease prevention and management.
• SPH PH 780: Chronic Disease: A Public Health Perspective
  This is the foundational course for the certificate in chronic and non-communicable disease (chronic/NCD). Chronic and non-communicable diseases (Chronic/NCD) are responsible for a large majority of the deaths in the United States and a rapidly rising share of deaths in low- and middle-income countries. In addition to their effect on mortality, these conditions have an enormous impact on disability, quality of life, health care costs, and lost productivity, and are also a major contributor to health disparities. The course provides students with an overview of the public health approach toward chronic/NCD across the continuum of identification of causes, implementation and evaluation of strategies for prevention, and treatment and management of disease to reduce mortality and improve quality of life. Through readings, lectures, in-class exercises, and group work, the course provides a foundation for students to further develop their knowledge and skills in subsequent courses toward their certificate.
• SPH PH 800: Preparing Doctoral Students to Teach
  This workshop style course is directed toward doctoral students in advanced programs in Environmental Health, Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Health Policy and Management and the Doctoral of Public Health (DrPh) degree. The principle foci for the course will be implementing principles of integrated course design and developing effective teaching strategies. Students will create an e-portfolio complete with teaching philosophy statement, a curriculum module developed during the course, a brief presentation of that module via microteaching along with evidence of their teaching, community service and research work.
• SPH PH 801: Community Engaged Research: Theory, Methods, and Applications
  This course provides an overview of theory and methods for working with communities to conduct research that informs public health practice and policy. Through a combination of lectures, discussion, case-studies, and interaction with practitioners, we will explore the history of research in community settings; theoretical, ethical, and methodological considerations for engaging non-scientists in research; the role of particular communities of interest in transforming research funding and infrastructure; and specific examples from local research initiatives. The course also trains students in the necessary skills to form a research question, work with communities to form research questions, identify appropriate research methods in response to such questions, to write a proposal to conduct community engaged research.
• SPH PH 820: Capstone Course in Chronic and Non-communicable Diseases
  This course examines key issues related to chronic and non-communicable diseases. Through the course, students learn to select and apply frameworks and concepts learned throughout their coursework to identify public health solutions to issues of chronic and non-communicable disease determinants, prevention, treatment, management, and financing.
• SPH PH 825: Analysis of Emerging Infections Using the One Health Approach
  This class employs One Health, an approach to public health emphasizing the interconnectedness of human health, animal health, and the environment, to provide a basic understanding of factors involved in the natural history of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), and of approaches required for the control and prevention of these diseases. The number of reported EIDs has been steadily increased over past decades and while the global burden of individual diseases is often minimal, historically, some EIDs (e.g., HIV, influenza, chikungunya, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)) have had enormous global public health impact, and local impacts can often be quite severe, particularly in developing settings (e.g., Ebola in West Africa). The majority of EIDs are vector-borne and/or zoonotic, and a wide range of social, behavioral, and physical environmental factors contribute to their emergence, making the One Health approach crucial to understanding these diseases. In this class, case study of specific EIDs is used to illustrate the involvement of multiple factors in disease emergence and spread. Emphasis is placed on understanding the natural history and pathogenesis of these EIDs, and the laboratory methods commonly used for their diagnosis and surveillance. At the conclusion of the course, students will be able to apply the principles they have learned to analyze and determine the factors involved in the new emergence or re-emergence of an infectious disease; knowledge which is ultimately essential for determining appropriate disease control and prevention strategies.
• SPH PH 842: Research Theory and Design
  This course focuses on the philosophy of science and the practice of research in public health. It compares and contrasts different approaches to scholarship and examines what makes some research interesting and important. The course will focus on developing research questions, objectives and aims in the context of what is already known/not known about an area of study. Students will develop the background and specific aims sections for a research proposal by the end of the course.
• SPH PH 843: Introduction to Quantitative Analysis for Public Health and Health Services Research
  Through this course, doctoral students and advanced masters students will build their skills and intuition to use statistical methods to conduct public health and health services research. Rather than providing a menu of options for statistical analysis, the course will emphasize key concepts that unify different approaches, using linear regression as a case study in statistical and causal inference. The course will cover critical sources of bias in estimating point parameters and standard errors, including: confounding, measurement error, missing data, and correlated and heteroskedastic errors. The instructional model for the course will be the integration of lectures, in-class and at-home simulation exercises in R, critique of existing studies, and analysis of real data. Students completing this course will have built the intuition and gained the hands-on-experience needed to implement regression-based analyses in their own future work; to take higher level courses in statistical analysis and study design successfully; and to engage with the quantitative literature in public health and health services research with a critical eye.
• SPH PH 844: Introduction to Qualitative Analysis for Public Health and Health Services Research
  Qualitative methods are increasingly used either independently or as part of mixed-methods designs to answer "how" and "why" questions that other research methods may not inform. In this course, students will learn to identify different types of qualitative methods and the types of research questions and problems for which they are appropriate; different approaches to the analysis of a variety of types of qualitative data and to critically assess examples of such methods used in the literature.
• SPH PH 845: Integrated Learning Experience for MPH
  The BU MPH Integrative Learning Experience (ILE) affords students the opportunity to synthesize foundational and certificate competencies. Students will integrate and apply the knowledge and skills obtained throughout the degree program. ILEs will be tied to the student's required functional certificate and will incorporate skills and content from their context certificate as appropriate. Students will only complete one ILE, regardless of the number of certificates they pursue. Students working to complete two functional certificates will meet with their faculty advisors and Career Services staff to determine which ILE option is best for their career interests. The ILE is a required, 0-credit component of the MPH. It is student-initiated and faculty guided. Students will register for PH 845 for the ILE in their last semester.
• SPH PH 851: Needs Assessment
  This course examines the processes by which local and regional health status and services can be assessed and analyzed. Students will learn approaches to: quantitatively and qualitatively defining public health problems; setting a community agenda by prioritizing distinct public health problems; engage the community in assessing local capacity to address those problems; visualizing those problems with Geographic Information Systems; and presenting the results of their assessment to audiences of decision makers and the public.
• SPH PH 853: Strategic Planning and Communications
  This course focuses on the development and implementation of program and policy interventions that can improve public health by modifying people's health-related behaviors, and on the design and execution of effective oral and written communications to support those interventions. Working through a sequence of written assignments, students will develop: (1) a set of theory-based learning and environmental change objectives; (2) a strategic plan for a program or policy intervention designed to change an important health-related behavior; (3) a management plan for implementing and maintaining that intervention; (4) a supportive communication strategy; and (5) specific media and communications executions to operationalize that strategy. In class writing workshops and individual consultations are designed to give students ideas for their projects and interim feedback on their written assignments.
• SPH PH 854: Program and Policy Evaluation
  Evaluation research is critical to the advancement of public health knowledge and the improvement of program services. This course focuses on the theory and practice of program evaluation and the development of student evaluation skills and their implementation in practice. Students will use case study materials. Students will learn to conceptualize the entire evaluation process from the development of program logic, through evaluation design, measurement, sample size calculation and an analysis plan. In addition, students will learn about cost-effectiveness analysis and meta-analysis for policy development.

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