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 GH 722: Supply Chain Management for Improved Health System Performance
  Supply chain logistics is an important aspect of public health programs, and an area that is often unappreciated. The journey from manufacturer to a patient in a remote rural village in Africa is complicated and fascinating serious management challenge. This course provides a practical introduction to the core tenets of health commodity supply chain management (SCM), including system design, assessment, quantification, procurement, inventory management, and logistics management information systems. Using the "Access Framework," students will gain foundational knowledge and apply that knowledge in class exercises, discussions, case studies, and stakeholder interactions. Course assignments will have a strong experiential component with a focus on professional level communications and analytical skills.
• SPH GH 735: Gender, Sexuality, Power, and Inequity in Global 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 GH 741: Global Health Consultation Techniques
  This course will prepare students for consulting and technical assistance assignments in developing countries. Students learn to analyze the pros and cons of potential consulting assignments and prepare proposals. The potential conflicts between donors/sponsors and the agency receiving the consulting services will be considered. Assignments considered include financial analysis, operational improvements, training and program evaluation. Cross cultural issues and the problems of operating in remote areas are discussed. This course is for foreign nationals returning to their own countries and US citizens/residents who will seek international assignments with USAID contractors or NGOs. During this intensive one week course, students prepare a proposal in response to an actual RFP (Request for Proposal) as well as a presentation summarizing findings of a major consulting or research assignment.
• SPH GH 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 GH 744: Program Design for Global 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 GH 745: Monitoring and Evaluation of Global Health Programs
  here is consensus within the global 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. The course has a required, non-credit lab that is scheduled in a different time slot than the class.
• SPH GH 747: Resource Mobilization
  Health organizations today are striving to achieve a greater level of sustainability. To achieve this goal, organizations must mobilize resources to serve clients, while remaining mission-driven in the face of market and donor shifts. Resource mobilization refers to all activities undertaken by an organization to secure financial, human and material resources to achieve its mission, including grants and proposal writing, fundraising, and business planning. Through case studies, students will learn how to develop a feasible resource mobilization plan for an organization incorporating a mix of strategies, and aligned with strategic and operational plans. As a final project, student teams will develop a business plan for a proposed new health product or service, including making projections of estimated financial and social return on investment.
• SPH GH 750: Gender, Sexuality, Power, and Inequality in Global 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 GH 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 GH 756: Analytical Methods for Pharmaceutical Systems Assessment
  This course aims to develop skills essential to assessing and evaluating pharmaceutical policy and the performance of pharmaceutical programs. Students will learn to develop a pharmaceutical country profile, analyze medicine prices and availability, apply technical guidelines, and use other assessment tools and methods in the pharmaceutical sector. Students will also develop skills to undertake a sampling exercise, use qualitative methods, and review and write technical reports. Students will use instruments which are already developed with a focus on implementation issues, analysis of data collected and awareness of strength and limitation of each method applied. The course will introduce students to the many resources which exist to help understand pharmaceutical sectors, and prepare them to work in a national or sub national pharmaceutical system.
• SPH GH 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 GH 760: Foundations in Global Health
  Global health is defined as "collaborative trans-national research and action for promoting health for all." It requires an understanding of how context and culture affect population-wide and individually based health care actions, systems and strategies. Through this course students develop an understanding of the causes and consequences of global health problems, especially in low- and middle-income countries, and how underlying social, economic, environmental and political determinants of health in different countries affect health outcomes. Students learn how global health systems developed over time in varying environments, and the factors affecting their design and performance. Case studies and exercises provide students with opportunities to apply foundational skills in analyzing global health systems and situations, and develop cross-cultural awareness and resourcefulness in solving problems that they may encounter in their professional careers. The course places a strong emphasis on developing skills in persuasive, evidence-based writing and oral presentation.
• SPH GH 762: Essentials of Economics and Finance for Global 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 global health financing policy problems.
• SPH GH 765: Cross-Cultural Approaches to Mental Health in Low & Middle Income Countries Certificate: Mental Health and Substance Use
  This course introduces students to mental health and mental illness in low and middle income countries and also looks at some highly vulnerable populations in high-income countries. Class sessions and assignments will provide students with a chance to explore the critical role played by the social, cultural, and economic context in defining local concepts of mental health and in availability and type of treatment in a variety of contexts. The course is designed to provide students with a working knowledge of the history of mental health on the global agenda, core theoretical concepts underlying research and interventions, and innovative methodological approaches to adapting psychiatric assessment tools and treatment for cross-cultural, low-resource contexts. Students will build skills in identifying and critically analyzing global and country-specific data estimating the burden of mental health disorders. They will also develop creative approaches to research, treatment, and advocacy to improve health systems and legal protections for people living with mental health disorders.
• SPH GH 766: Sexual and Reproductive 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.
• SPH GH 770: Poverty, Health, and Development
  Poverty, Health and Development is an elective course for MPH students in Global Health and a core course for graduate students in the Global Development Policy Program at BU. The goal of this course is for students to explore the relationships between poverty, health, and development in low-income countries. While not primarily a methods course, methods in public health, economics, statistics, and quantitative impact evaluation will be introduced and used throughout the course.
• SPH GH 773: Financial Management for Health Programs
  Health care managers must be prepared to talk about financial issues, analyze and interpret data, and make decisions using financial information. This course develops competencies in cost analysis, pricing, budgeting, and reading financial reports in international health settings where financial systems are weak and data not easily available. In addition to using principles of differential and full cost analysis, students gain skills in breakeven analysis and calculating mark-ups. Examples are drawn from hospitals, clinics, and revolving drug funds from developing countries.
• SPH GH 774: Community Health Assessment in Mexico: A Field Practicum
  
• SPH GH 775: Field Practicum in Africa
  
• SPH GH 777: Global Health Culminating Experience Seminar
  This seminar course has two main purposes: first, to enable participants to respond to one another's work, examine issues in the writing process, make improvements from draft to draft, and complete a well-researched, well-argued concentration paper; second, to explore issues in global health that are the focus of their research and emerge with a greater understanding of the questions they raise for policy and practice. Papers go through three drafts, and students will have the opportunity to give and receive feedback in peer review sessions. Background readings and regular participation in class critiques and discussions are required. Students must be working on their culminating experience to be enrolled in the class.

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