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 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 focuses on health and it 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 converge within the field of public health at the national and international levels. This seminar explores the theoretical meaning of this convergence, engages the sources of authority for human rights, and uses case studies to examine how public health advocates can be effective in the realms of social justice and equity. Examples include the U.S. legal and various international standards creating a "right to health;" economic rights and the importance of money in health care; reproductive rights and technologies; standards for medical research and informed consent; and framing the end of life as a public health or a human rights issue.
• SPH LW 850: Public Health Law
  Traditional public health is rapidly transforming itself from state programs to prevent disease in populations (e.g., vaccinations and newborn screening) to federal and international efforts to more broadly promote the "right to health." This problem-oriented seminar enables students to analyze and answer questions about health risks and public health policies as they typically arise in practice -- in all their complexity and without preassigned doctrinal labels. It covers contemporary examples of the seven deadly sins -- anger, gluttony, lust, sloth -- plus drugs, alcohol, tobacco, food, firearms, biobanks, epidemics, and surveillance. The seminar offers a systematic framework for identifying and controlling health risks, drawing on theories of risk perception, cognitive reasoning and empirical evidence. Students analyze and compare the applicability and effectiveness of different legal strategies to control risks, such as criminal and civil prohibitions, mandatory product standards, tort liability, mandatory data collection, biometric testing, conditions of employment, marketing restrictions, quarantine, and taxation. Emphasis is on the different scope of laws (state, federal and international) regulating personal behavior and laws regulating products and commercial activities. A writing project to develop a legal strategy to address a contemporary risk to health is required.
• SPH LW 854: Mental Health Law, Policy & Ethics
  This seminar tackles some of the most complex issues in mental health, such as involuntary confinement, adolescent disorders and decision-making, deinstitutionalization, the right to treatment and the right to refuse treatment, criminalization, substance use disorders, medicalization and the meaning of mental illness, forced treatments, discrimination, confidentiality, research, and professional ethics. The course will focus primarily on legal cases, utilizing these as case studies to explore the intersection of law, policy, and ethics to determine the manner in which we attempt to understand and regulate in the area of mental health.
• SPH LW 951: Directed Studies in Health Law, Bioethics, & Human Rights
  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 a paper registration form and a signed directed study proposal form. 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 Registrar's 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 practical courses during their MPH education.
• SPH LW 952: Directed Research in Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights
  Directed Research 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 1, 2, 3, or 4 credits. To register, students must submit a paper registration form and signed directed research proposal form. Students are placed in a section by the Registrar's 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 MC 705: Safer Sex in the City: from Science to Policy
  Our knowledge of sex and sexuality is derived in large part from the sociocultural and religious context of our society and the specific community and families in which we have been raised. In this class we will use a variety of teaching methods to allow you to discover how much you really know about basic sexual health information, including current public health sexual health issues. Then you will acquire an understanding of the issues based on current thinking from the biologic and social sciences. After covering the basics of each topic, we will explore some of the contextual factors, such as history, culture, or economics that affect framing of the issues and discuss the direct public health ramifications. The course will also help you develop your skills in communication, debate, teaching, and podcasting about sexual health from a public health perspective.
• SPH MC 725: Women, Children and Adolescents: A Public Health Approach
  This course introduces students to the principles and practices of public health and maternal and child health. Using the life course perspective, the course examines how infants, children, women and families develop in the context of biologic and social determinants of health, as they play out over a lifetime and across generations. Selected current topics--such as asthma, adolescent pregnancy, infant mortality, and childhood obesity--are studied in depth and used to illustrate how problems are understood, their distribution in diverse populations, and the content and quality of programs required to address them. Throughout the course, special attention is given to the impact of poverty, poor access to health care, and racial inequalities on the health of families, as well as to the strengths that individuals and communities bring to the creation of solutions. By the end of the course students will be able to formulate an MCH-related public health question, conduct and write a literature review, and write a policy memo. MC725 is the first required course in the MCH sequence.
• SPH MC 730: Leading to Face Challenges and Achieve Results in Public Health
  MC 730 strengthens students to have the confidence and competence to lead to achieve results in public health. The course is an experiential learning process, ideal for public health professionals who aspire to be activists for change. Students work in teams to teach and learn leadership theories and practical exercises to motivate and mobilize groups. The course creates a safe space for exploration and experimentation of leadership practices. We work to create a climate in which all students are able to clarify and question their assumptions, and engage in dialogue with others. We have conversations where obstacles to leading for results in public health are identified and discussed. Students will practice leading, from whatever position they are in, to face the challenges of public health, including the challenges of social and racial justice.
• SPH MC 759: Perinatal and Child Health Epidemiology
  Issues related to the perinatal period from the framework of epidemiologic methods will be examined in this course through critical review of epidemiologic studies and exploration of measurement, design and data for this population. The course will examine the effect of social conditions, perinatal exposures and programmatic strategies for maternal and infant health. Participants will review various sources of perinatal epidemiologic data, and will address classification issues and challenges in assessing pregnancy exposures and outcomes related to these data sources. The final course project entails a formal, written literature review as well as an NIH-style study proposal on a perinatal issue.
• SPH MC 763: Maternal and Child Health Policy Making
  This course explores the process by which U.S. national and state policymakers allocate resources to mothers and children. Beginning with an analysis of the evolution of U.S. maternal and child health (MCH) policy, it utilizes general policy models and case studies to examine the special features of legislative, executive, administrative, and judicial policy making in MCH. The course examines how policy making in MCH has traditionally been characterized by a greater reliance on regulatory and judicial bodies, as well as the frequent use of mothers and children as political symbols. This course is taught in seminar format with weekly readings and student-led discussion.
• SPH MC 770: Children with Special Health Care Needs
  The course presents an overview of issues related to the design and delivery of services for children with special health care needs and their families in the United States. It addresses the nature and extent of chronic illness and disability among children, the demographics of childhood disability, the legislative framework for health and social services for this population, and the organization and implementation of services at local, state and federal levels. Throughout the course, the central role of family in the child's life and the importance of family-centered service systems are emphasized. The challenge of balancing complex care needs with needs related to childhood social and cognitive development is highlighted. Students are given opportunities to interact with families affected by special needs, and gain skills in the development of family-centered policy and program development.
• SPH MC 775: Social Justice and the Health of Populations: Racism and other systems of oppression in America
  This course is focused on strengthening public health students' knowledge, skills and ability to construct a critical appraisal of the determinants, distribution, causes, mechanisms, systems and consequences of health inequities. The course is premised on the knowledge that social patterns of health and well-being do not happen by accident, but occur as a result of social systems which unfairly advantage some and disadvantage other groups of people. As such, inequity more explicitly defines what we know to be a "fairness" issue in public health. The course will be organized around investigating the current state of health inequities in the United States, critically examining the current research around causes and consequences of inequities, and critiquing social and public health programs for their capacity to eliminate them. The course is designed to help students translate current knowledge and research into specific public health strategies. This class also carries concentration credit for the Social & Behavioral Sciences concentration.
• SPH MC 776: Advanced Practice and Research Methods for Public Health Equity
  This course prepares the more advanced student to conduct public health research and practice from an explicitly intersectional, racial/social justice-centered framework. Students will advance their skills in research methods as well as policy, program and institutional evaluation using a number of established frameworks and tools. Culminating projects will address key questions around systems of oppression and population patterns of health, and the capacity of programs, policies and organizations to disrupt or perpetuate health inequities.
• SPH MC 782: Women and Substance Use
  This course offers a window into the drivers, patterns, and consequences of substance use among women throughout the lifecourse. Through assessment of current evidence, critical reflection and discussion, application of multilevel theoretical frameworks, and engagement with practitioners, we will explore the complexity of sex and gender differences in substance use. We will review U.S. and global trends in substance use among women, contrast understandings of substance use acquired through quantitative and qualitative research methods, explore specific topics of public health significance (e.g., pregnancy, interpersonal relationships, infectious disease transmission, stigma, and disparities), and consider prevention, harm reduction, and treatment approaches. This course will provide you with a deeper understanding of the significance and complexity of sex/gender differences in various substance use issues.
• SPH MC 785: Reproductive Health Advocacy: From Rights to Justice
  This course prepares students to critically re-evaluate, strengthen, and argue their positions on matters related to the control of sex and reproduction. It allows student to focus on an array of issues related to women's fertility and its regulation and to use multiple frameworks--public health science, law, social history, religion and politics--to identify their values and frame and argue their positions for purposes of advocacy. The course begins with an overview of the social and political history of fertility control and current reproductive health services and policies. We then examine debates at the state and national levels in preparation for advocacy skill-building and practice, including a visit to the State House, interaction with a panel of advocacy organizations, participation in mock legislative hearings, and the writing of a fact sheet and op-ed article for a local or national newspaper. Students gain skills in critical analysis, argument, writing and presentation to government and lay audiences.
• SPH MC 786: Immigrant and Refugee Health
  This course focuses on low-income immigrants in the U.S. and applies a family and community health perspective to the study of their health and well-being. It begins with an overview of how political, economic, cultural factors at the global and local levels shape the migration patters and health of immigrants and refugees. We then examine specific immigrant groups and health issues, with attention to interventions that engage community members in taking action. Students will gain critical skills in contextual analysis, community based participatory research, and project design.
• SPH MC 795: The Health of Adolescents and Emerging Adults
  This course equips advanced undergraduates and Master's students from all departments and disciplines to examine the public health challenges presented by adolescents. The course begins with an introduction to adolescent development (i.e., in terms of biology, behavior, social roles, and psychology), and also reviews basic themes of public health (i.e., a public health approach, the social ecological framework). The course continues with in-depth review of the prevalence and causes of several key risk behaviors and health problems among adolescents, including: unintentional injury, sexual risk behaviors, suicide and mental health, obesity, multiple types of violence, and substance use. The course also reviews: health policy, school health, the role of the media on adolescent health, and issues in adolescent health research. Class sessions involve a variety of formats including small group work, lecture and discussion, activities, and debates.

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