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 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 patterns 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.
• SPH MC 800: Preventing Mental Health Disorders Among Women, Children, and Adolescents: A Life Course Perspective
  The course will use a prevention framework to examine mental health interventions targeted to women, children, and youth. We will explore how events that occur during critical developmental periods - early childhood, adolescence, and pregnancy - can alter the life course of the individual and the family. Readings will focus on preventive interventions that target specific disorders, as well as those focused on addressing risk and protective factors common to many mental health problems. We will pay particular attention to how preventive interventions can be implemented and disseminated at a community level and integrated into primary care health care settings and major public health programs. The course will involve substantial group work; the majority will be done during formal class sessions. The class is approved for MCH and SB concentration credit.
• SPH MC 802: Implementing Community Health Initiatives: A Field-based Course in Leadership and Consultation
  This course is designed for public health students from diverse backgrounds who aspire to be effective leaders for change in community health settings. Students work in teams to define and address a specific challenge with partners in a community health center or organization. Course sessions engage students in learning and teaching key concepts, theories, and practices in management, leadership, and community partnership. Students apply tools to define a challenge, scan the environment, investigate evidence, define interests of key stakeholders, map organizational processes, align and mobilize constituents, synthesize findings, and communicate findings and recommendations to the client organization in a polished presentation and consultant report. Throughout the course, students learn to build strong teams, create breakthroughs when breakdowns occur, and assess themselves and others as team players. The course prepares students to act as collaborative consultants in real-world professional settings.
• SPH MC 805: Perinatal and Child Health Services: From Evidence to Innovation and Implementation
  Societies that create conditions for healthy families and communities and invest in effective health systems and services extending from the perinatal period through infancy and childhood reap the benefits of healthier women, children, and families. In this course, programs, services, and policies to the wider aim of improving birth outcomes and sustaining the health and well-being of mothers, fathers, and children (ages 0-11) in the U.S.Of course, the path to effective services and policies is not always clear, either because political priorities do not support the aim, the evidence about what works is incomplete, inadequate, or poorly communicated to policy-makers, or because the challenges of implementation are daunting. Throughout the course, we will integrate each of these perspectives (political, scientific, and practical) as we critically examine a wide array of perinatal and child health services and the policies (MCH and cross-sectoral) that under gird them. The life course perspective, with its integration of human development and the cumulative effects of the social determinants of health, will serve as a guiding theoretical framework for the course; and, in turn, the promotion of equity and elimination of racial/ethnic disparities in outcomes and services will be a key thread in all of our discussions and activities.
• SPH MC 815: Sexual and Reproductive Health Advocacy: Practice in Global and Local Context
  MC815 is the 4-credit practice-based version of MC785, with expanded content in the area of global SRH and LGBTQ-related fertility and family formation. This course prepares students to design, lead, or collaborate in advocacy efforts around matters of sex, reproduction, sexual identity, and gender expression as they relate to family creation in public life. MC815 uses case-based teaching and practice-based learning. During the course, students engage with an advocacy organization and participate in an ongoing campaign or produce a product relevant to a new initiative. Throughout the course, student assess their own values related to SRH, and draw on multiple disciplines --social history, law, medicine, politics, religion, and public health science--to critically examine SRH movements and debates as they have played out in the U.S. and globally over time. Students develop skills in critical analysis, argument, advocacy strategies, and writing and presentation to diverse audiences, including public officials, readers of social media and the popular press.
• SPH MC 820: Managing Public Health Programs and Projects
  During this course we will focus on developing skills in both program and project management using the basic tenants of management theory, implementation, budgeting, and quality improvement. The class emphasizes professional development through a team approach. Students will employ a group process to analyze an existing program or organization and create tailored deliverables for a real public health client. The class is run like a work environment with an expectation that each student will come prepared to be an active and responsible team member. A portion of class time will be allocated for team meetings, which will allow for the simulation of workplace practices including: agenda setting, meeting facilitation, workflow management, peer evaluation, and oral presentation. Individual skills will be developed through the use of teaching cases and homework assignments. The approach is interactive and student- centered, with a focus on individual growth as it relates to collective work Students are expected to have completed the Leadership and Management Core before taking MC820.
• SPH MC 840: Women and Health Policy: Gender, Evidence, and Politics
  This course provides an opportunity to link theory, experience, and policy- making in the field of women's health. Topics explored during the first half of the course include: what women in the U.S. need, want and receive with respect to health care services and preventive education; the role of women as health activists, consumers and providers; the meaning of gender, race, class, and culture in the provider-patient relationship; the assumptions and agendas that have shaped the field of women's health; and the implications of that history for policy-making today. During the second half of the course, case studies are used to consider whether or not the questions currently being asked in women's health are the right questions and whether or not resources are being directed appropriately. Topics examined in depth include mammography, lesbian health, hormone replacement therapy, physical disability, depression and aging. Students complete the course with sharpened skills for making arguments and promoting their ideas orally and in writing to audiences as diverse as legislators, the media, private foundations, public health policy-makers, and the general public. This class carries SB concentration credit.
• SPH MC 845: Perinatal Health Services
  This seminar will focus on the contribution of perinatal health services and policies to improving birth outcomes and maternal well-being and reducing racial/ethnic disparities. This seminar will not address the identification of underlying causes or risks for poor birth outcomes, but rather the amelioration of known risks through organized public health programs and policies. A sample of current prenatal health initiatives will be examined, including the CDC's preconception and health care initiatives; comprehensive prenatal care (including home visiting) and centering pregnancy initiatives; community-based Healthy Start initiatives and collective impact models; the March of Dimes prematurity prevention campaign; intrapartum care interventions and models of maternity care; women's health and MCH life-course initiatives. The special emphasis of this course will be on the practical implementation and delivery of efficacious perinatal health services
• SPH MC 871: Advanced Topics in MCH
  This course addresses timely topics in maternal and child health at an advanced level. It allows students to build on their prior coursework and/or experience and knowledge of the field, focusing on a particular topic in more depth than is available in introductory courses. Topics vary each semester; for information regarding the current offerings, please refer to the print or web-based School of Public Health schedule.
• SPH MC 931: Directed Studies in Maternal and Child 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 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 practica courses during their MPH education.
• SPH MC 932: Directed Research in Maternal and Child Health
  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 SPH 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 MC 940: Maternal and Child Health Culminating Experience
  All Maternal and Child Health concentrators must complete an integrative paper. Students must meet with their advisors to plan the experience, submit a signed Culminating Experience Approval form, and complete the drafts and final product according to the established deadlines. In addition, MCH Leadership Program students must complete an electronic portfolio by the established deadlines for the MCH Culminating Experience. To document their work on the culminating experience, concentrators must register for SPH MC940, a zero-credit, pass/fail course. For more details on the requirements for the culminating experience, please see the Concentrator Guide.
• SPH MC 941: Maternal and Child Health Culminating Experience II
  All Maternal and Child Health concentrators must complete an integrative paper. Students must meet with their advisors to plan the experience, submit a signed Culminating Experience Approval form, and complete the drafts and final product according to the established deadlines. Should the deadline not be met, MCH concentrators must register for SPH MC941, a zero-credit, pass/fail course, in the next semester, summer included. For more details on the requirements for the culminating experience, please see the Concentrator Guide.
• SPH PH 510: Essentials of Public Health
  Students will gain an understanding of public health as a broad, collective enterprise that seeks to extend the benefits of current biomedical, environmental, social, and behavioral knowledge in ways that maximize its impact on the health status of a population. The course will provide an overview of the public health approach including epidemiology, disease surveillance, sustainable solutions, social determinants of health, and disease prevention. Through active learning, students will learn skills in identifying and addressing an ever expanding list of health problems that call for collective action to protect, promote and improve our nation's health, primarily through preventive strategies. Specific topics will include: food safety, toxics reduction, HIV/AIDS & COVID-19, vaccines, and tobacco control and prevention. PH510 is a requirement for obtaining an undergraduate minor in public health. It is appropriate for undergraduates and others who are not in an SPH degree program. It does not carry degree credit for MPH students. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Social Inquiry II, Critical Thinking.
  BU Hub Learn More

  • Ethical Reasoning
  • Social Inquiry II
  • Critical Thinking
• SPH PH 511: Pathogens, Poverty, and Populations: An Introduction to Global Health
  This course will introduce students to issues of public health importance in developing countries. For each disease or public health problem considered, the class will explore its epidemiology, natural history, risk factors and contributing causes, and responses of the public health community at local, national, regional, and international levels. The course includes six sections: Core Concepts, Child Health and Nutrition, Infectious Diseases, Women?s Health and HIV/AIDS, Chronic and Non-communicable Diseases, and Concluding Sessions. PH511 is appropriate for undergraduates and others who are not in an SPH degree program. Students who complete PH511 as undergraduates should not also take IH703.
• SPH PH 700: Foundations of Public Health
  Effective public health requires expertise from many disciplines, and students in public health sciences need to have a broad foundation of knowledge across these diverse disciplines in order to collaborate effectively with other health professionals. PH700 Foundations of Public Health is an online course designed to provide students with foundational knowledge in the profession and science of public health and factors related to public health. PH700 (0 credits) meets the foundational knowledge criteria (as outlined by CEPH) for all MPH and DrPH students.
• SPH PH 712: Public Health Response to Emergencies in the United States
  This course provides students with the necessary knowledge and skills to understand the public health impacts and roles during emergencies and disasters in the United States. The course will use two recent cases, 2013 Boston marathon bombing and 2009-2010 pandemic flu, to explore the persons, events, decisions, policies, and systems involved in each of the events. Students will apply emergency preparedness skills to analyze preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation operations and to communicate risk effectively. Students will consider the question that plagues governmental authorities and residents alike: ARE WE READY? In the end, students will possess a command over how the public health system can provide essential services and support healthy communities during times of emergency. This is accomplished through a combination of case studies, panel discussions, team activities, tours, and exercises.
• SPH PH 715: Communication and Collaboration for Public Health Leaders
  This course prepares students to develop and implement communications strategies. Students will learn how to communicate complex topics in clear and engaging ways to the public, media, elected officials and others outside of the public health discipline.
• SPH PH 717: Quantitative Methods for Public Health
  Public health is, at its core, an evidence-based discipline. Evaluating relevant evidence to understand the distribution and determinants of disease across the population and to identify and engage in prevention activities requires the collection, analysis and communication of quantitative information. In this course, students will learn fundamental quantitative skills to evaluate data and make evidence-based decisions as a public health professional. This course will provide students with core training in the conduct and design of epidemiologic studies, basic biostatistical analyses and the use of biostatistical software, and foundational knowledge of exposure and outcome assessment.

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