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 718: Leadership and Management for Public Health
  Public health professionals rarely work alone to make anything happen. Thus, the goal of this course is to develop your ability to be a change agent for public health by furthering your abilities to communicate with, engage, and organize others in the pursuit of specific projects and change efforts. While you may not immediately hold a formal leadership position, you can always "lead from where you are" and/or informally by understanding how to effectively and ethically work with others both within and beyond your particular organizational home, and manage processes to achieve specific objectives, in order to advance the health issues that you care about.
• SPH PH 719: Health Systems, Law, and Policy
  This is a course about who gets what health services, when and how. Policies and laws governing what services are available and on what terms strongly influence health status at both the individual and population levels. This course examines the Constitutional, regulatory, political and socio-economic bases for the policies that determine access, quality, cost and equity in health services and population health programs. While the focus is principally on US examples, the course is structured on the World Health Organization's framework for organizing and analyzing national health systems, covering governance, financing, delivery systems, workforce, and human and other resources. The course combines intensive individual preparation for each class using both written and video materials, interactive class presentations and hands-on individual and group projects in laboratory sessions.
• SPH PH 720: Individual, Community, and Population Health
  This course is intended to provide students with a foundation for future coursework in program design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. It assumes little prior knowledge of determinants of health, and various ways of addressing health problems. It aims to help give students an appreciation of health and the determinants of health at multiple levels in order to gain knowledge and skills necessary to work effectively to improve the health of individuals, communities, and populations.
• 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
  This class provides students with an overview of key analytical approaches often used in decision making related to the environment, climate change and other public health settings. This includes topics such as decision theory, multi-criteria analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-benefit analysis, alternative approaches for assigning values to health outcomes, risk assessment/management, health impact 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 747: Using data for decision making
  More than ever before, managers need to make sound decisions based on data. Robust dashboards are important tools in this process. Build your Excel "toolbox" by learning and applying useful formulas, graphing and dashboarding techniques, and data analysis in a wide range of real-world case study examples, such as costing of standard treatment guidelines, utilization analysis, and performance dashboards to monitor and evaluate health interventions. Students will have the opportunity to build their own dashboards to apply to a health service challenge, either using a data set of their choosing or one supplied by the instructors.
• SPH PH 750: Essentials of Population Health Research
  The goal of this 4-credit course is to introduce students to the data, tools, and methods of population health research. Students will develop the skills necessary to formulate and answer consequential research questions in population health research drawing on theory and methods from epidemiology, biostatistics, and the broader social sciences. Students will prepare an extended research abstract by the end of the semester on a topic of interest in population health research.
• 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 760: Accelerated Training in Statistical Computing
  This class will introduce students to statistical programming in SAS and the conceptual foundations for biostatistical and epidemiologic data analyses, including descriptive statistics, univariate and multivariable regression, and stratified analyses. The course will also introduce students to analysis of qualitative data, predictive and causal modeling, and data visualization. This is a two week intensive course that includes hands-on exercises and projects designed to build skills in statistical computing in population health research.
• SPH PH 771: Topics in Public Health
  Varies by semester; see printed course descriptions and printed course schedules on School of Public Health web site, http://sph.bu.edu/registrar
• 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 781: Topics in Bst
  
• SPH PH 782: Topics in Chs
  
• SPH PH 783: Topics in EH: Local and Global Public Health Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic
  This course provides a high-level overview of how the COVID-19 pandemic has and is affecting global and domestic health and changing civilization. It is co-taught by faculty from the BU Schools of Public Health and Medicine and other professionals actively confronting the COVID-19 pandemic on the frontlines. Initial sessions provide students with background on the emergence and natural history of SARS-CoV-2, epidemiologic and clinical aspects of COVID-19, and treatment options and prevention strategies including non-pharmacological approaches and vaccines. Subsequently, sessions will examine political, social, and economic factors influencing the COVID-19 pandemic, with particular focus on the disease vulnerabilities of certain subpopulations and health disparities that have been aggravated by the disease. Future prevention and control of COVID-19 will be considered throughout the course as well as strategies to optimize preparedness and response to future respiratory diseases of pandemic potential that might subsequently emerge. This course should be of interest to MPH students across all certificates and interested undergraduates. Students will receive current information on the impact of the pandemic on health and wellbeing, and they will engage in discussions with professionals who have ongoing experience with COVID-19.
• SPH PH 784: Topics in EP: Science in a Pandemic
  The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak has put pressure on science the likes of which few epidemiologists have ever experienced. Timelines are compressed, science is under scrutiny, the integrity of scientists are being questioned, the public has mixed trust in science and science itself is confronting its own limitations. The purpose of this course is to use the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak as a case study in how scientists should react to a massive public health emergency and to identify the lessons we can learn from how we have engaged so far in response to COVID-19.

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