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 805: Controversies in Global Control and Eradication of Infectious Diseases
  Control of infectious diseases and especially pandemics has become urgent public policy. This course focuses active controversies regarding past and current eradication/control campaigns for infectious diseases. We consider the biological, epidemiological, sociological, political, ethical, and programmatic features that allowed the smallpox eradication campaign to succeed, as a template for understanding control of other infectious diseases. Current candidates for global eradication/elimination campaigns that will be covered include SARS CoV-2, smallpox, polio, measles, malaria, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, and dracunculiasis, and any new outbreaks that may be occur during the semester. We will explore and discuss how basic and clinical scientific findings from the primary scientific literature drives our understanding of disease transmission and mitigation strategies. Source material will consist of focused readings of the primary scientific literature, podcast interviews of global program leaders (e.g. GAVI, BMGF), policy memos and group presentations with class discussions. The goal is to inform students of the elements of infectious disease control involving different pathogens, in varied populations, and to achieve an understanding of the rationale behind different control program designs. This will prepare the student to more meaningfully participate in the important policy debate around infectious disease control. This is an advanced level seminar course.
• SPH GH 806: Using Mobile Technologies to Improve Health Outcomes
  Located at the nexus of technology, informatics and public health, mHealth (defined as medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other wireless devices) is rapidly emerging from its pilot stage to become an important component of public health programs. In this course, you will learn how to design, develop, implement and evaluate a mHealth program. You will learn the basic terminology of mHealth programs, how to develop, design and evaluate a mHealth intervention as well as learn the current state of the field and major international mHealth implementers. Using a theoretical base, you will also learn the technical skills of developing an application based on a case study that can be deployed and used on a mobile phone. This course is suited for students who are at least in their second semester and who are familiar or interested in learning more about how mobile technology intersects with the health sector.
• SPH GH 809: Tech Pop Anlys
  
• SPH GH 811: Applied Research Methods in Global Health
  The objective of this course is to teach student teams how to collect and analyze data to answer research questions and evaluate health interventions. Student teams will conduct a research study with multiple research methods including a cross-sectional survey and their choice from a variety of qualitative methods. The scope of the research questions addressed will be limited to minimal risk research conducted with students on the Boston University Medical Campus in the space of a semester. Each team will design a questionnaire, administer it, and enter and analyze the data using R. In conjunction with the cross-sectional survey, each team will also use some form of qualitative method, such as in-depth interviews or focus group discussions. The student teams will integrate the results of the cross-sectional survey and the qualitative research and present a report with findings and recommendations to their peers and faculty members. Students completing the course will have the skills to be able to collect and analyze data in a wide variety of settings.
• SPH GH 815: Methods for Impact Evaluation
  This four-credit course provides students with a set of theoretical and methodological skills to evaluate the causal impacts of public health programs and policies. Students learn to use a broad range of evaluation methodologies, including experimental and quasi-experimental designs. They strengthen their skills through critical analysis of published evaluation research. They also apply their skills to design an ideal impact evaluation for an intervention or program of their own choosing. Students taking this course should already be competent in understanding and applying basic quantitative methods for public health research. This is a Third Level course intended for MPH students enrolled in the Monitoring and Evaluation Certificate, and these students are given priority for enrollment. Other interested students may enroll, space permitting.
• SPH GH 854: From Data to Dashboards: Building Excel Skills to Support Health Program Decisions
  In these uncertain times, managers need, more than ever, to make sound decisions based on data. Good spreadsheet models are important tools in this process. Build your Excel "toolbox" by learning and applying robust formulas, graphing and dashboarding techniques, and data analysis in a wide range of real-world case study examples, such as cost and utilization analysis, estimation of revenues and expenses, and performance dashboards to monitor and evaluate performance of health interventions. Students will have the opportunity to build their own models to apply to a health service challenge of their choosing. This course is appropriate for upper level MPH students who have basic excel skills.
• SPH GH 880: Confronting Non-Communicable Diseases in the Developing World: The Burden, Costs and Health Systems Challenges
  A combination of lower fertility rates and changing environmental factors and lifestyles has led to aging populations and epidemics of tobacco addiction, obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes, and other chronic ailments, aggravating the persisting burden of infectious diseases in the developing world. This advanced course aims at providing a thorough understanding of the risk factors, epidemiology, burden, and economic consequences of the most prevalent non-communicable diseases and the fundamental policy considerations regarding intervention strategies for their prevention and control in resource constrained settings. This overall goal will be achieved by marrying economic approaches with those of epidemiology, clinical medicine and public health.
• SPH GH 881: Global Reproductive and Perinatal Health
  This course addresses the major reproductive and perinatal health problems facing communities around the world. We will focus on current strategies to address human reproduction, maternal health and the health of newborns. For each problem, we will consider the fundamental causes and possible solutions--what works/doesn't work and what is being tried. Topics will include determinants of maternal mortality, Perinatal Mortality, conditions that impact pregnancy outcomes, major causes of global maternal mortality, programming, policy and advocacy.
• SPH GH 885: Global Trade, Intellectual Property, and Public Health
  The COVID-19 pandemic has shone an unflattering light on the global public health system. In particular, the medical supply chain and trade in medicines is being controlled by a few high income countries, in part because they actually "own" the medicines, including vaccines they are exporting. Any person interested in the global public health "ecosystem," needs to know about how medical products get, or do not get, from one country to the other and how low and middle-income countries are at a disadvantage. The pandemic has illuminated the role and importance of intellectual property rules. Public health activists often show outright opposition to these rules and 'big pharma' often has an unthinking acceptance that change will destroy biomedical innovation and lead to poorer health outcomes. This course will explore both side of this complex and ambiguous relationship between global trade, intellectual property and its impact on public health.
• SPH GH 887: Planning and Managing MCH Programs in Developing Countries
  This course provides a practical framework to enable students to design, manage, and evaluate services for children and women, with an emphasis on child health. The course covers the major health challenges with a focus on children and explores specific interventions to address these challenges. Topics covered include diarrheal disease, acute respiratory infection, immunization, malaria, micronutrient deficiencies, HIV/AIDS, safe motherhood and neonatal health. The final six weeks of the course will give students the opportunity to identify the technical, political, organizational, and environmental factors necessary for a successful program. Students will work in teams to respond to an RFP for improving the health of women, children, or newborns in a developing country. Teams will attend a bidder's conference and then prepare and present a written and oral proposal to an outside grants committee. Students cannot take both IH744 and IH887 for MPH degree credit.
• SPH GH 888: Seminar on Global Health Policy Issues
  Foundational knowledge on the development, implementation and evaluation of global health policy is critical to improve population health. How is policy formulated in different settings? Who sets the policy agenda? Why do some issues get the attention of policy-makers, while other equally important issues fail to gain traction? And what approaches can be used to improve the chances of a particular policy being adopted and successfully implemented? Students will carry out a policy analysis on a policy issue of their choice, using the policy analysis approaches and tools presented in class. They will develop a political strategy for the implementation of a policy and propose a plan for the effective implementation and evalation of the policy. They will present the work to a policy maker and receive feedback and guidance from experts in the field.
• SPH GH 891: Global Pharmaceutical Policy: At the Intersection of Process and Politics
  Health care organizations need to provide viable and sustainable solutions to the many problems confronting them while balancing the often inconsistent and opposing agendas and interests of stakeholders. GH891 introduces the student to the real world of pharmaceutical policy making in global health. Students will analyze medicines issues at the intersection of policy, process and politics. Students will develop skills in pharmaceutical policy analysis through case studies, lectures, and discussion.
• SPH GH 941: Directed Studies in Global 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 an add/drop form and a signed directed study proposal form. Students who are completing the culminating experience project must register for GH943. 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 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 GH 942: Directed Research in Global Health
  This course provides the opportunity for advanced students to become involved in global health research of a public health nature or to undertake research independently. Arrangements are made with the appropriate full time GH faculty member. Students must submit an add/drop form and a directed research proposal form signed by the supervising faculty. Directed research is a graded, variable credit course (1, 2, 3, or 4 credits). Students may complete a maximum of 8 directed study, directed research or practicum credits during their MPH program.
• SPH GH 943: Global Health Directed Study for Culminating Experience
  Students who must complete a directed study for their Global Health Culminating Experience register for IH943 with their culminating experience advisor. Students who select Option Two, the journal article, must register for a 2-credit directed study. Other students may choose a 1-credit directed study if appropriate and approved by the Global Health Department. Registration in GH943 is via a proposal form and an add/drop form. Registration is not online.
• SPH GH 950: Culminating Experience in Global Health I
  Zero-credit option for completing the required culminating experience in global health. Students may register in fall, spring, or summer. Students must select a culminating experience option, complete the required documents with the Academic Services Coordinator, and register online for the class. Registering accords the student part-time status. Students who do not finish their culminating experience in the semester in which they registered for IH950 must register for IH951 in the next semester.
• SPH GH 951: Culminating Experience in Global Health II
  Students who do not finish their culminating experience in the semester in which they registered for IH950 must register for IH951 in the next semester. IH950 and IH951 are zero-credit options for completing the required culminating experience in global health. Students may register in fall, spring, or summer. Students must select a culminating experience option, complete the required documents with the Academic Services Coordinator, and register online for the class. Registering accords the student part-time status.
• SPH LW 709: Healthcare Rationing: Medicine, Markets and Morals
  Although health care is rationed in a variety of ways in the United States, Americans, and American politicians in particular, make believe that rationing does not exist. Indeed, efforts at health care reform have often been criticized for leading to "rationing' health care resources, implying that rationing is something evil. The idea that all Americans get the health care they need or that we have limitless resources is obviously not so. What health care is available and to whom is the result of the often invisible choices policy makers make. This course critically explores the health care allocation choices that have been made and will be made in the future. It analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of various rationing methods, the values and moral judgments reflected in each, and the political and financial factors influencing the choice of approach, as well as who should make such choices. Examples of rationing to be discussed include the distribution of organs for transplantation, determining what constitutes "necessary" care under insurance schemes, the use of markets and lotteries as rationing methods, limitations on population screening, the use of age and "social worth" to limit health care to individuals, triage in emergencies, and the utility (or disutility) of cost-benefit analysis for making decisions about the availability and distribution of health care. By the end of the course, students will be able to articulate the range of possible rationing methods and to appropriately apply these methods to different scarce resource circumstances.
• SPH LW 719: Essentials of Public Health Law
  Law is an essential tool for creating and implementing public health policies. The goal of this course is to enable students to understand how and when the law can be used to implement health policies and programs. It is designed for students who do not have prior experience or education in law and covers basic legal concepts and the process of decision making by legislative, administrative, and judicial bodies. Students learn how to construct oral and written arguments while analyzing how American law balances the rights of individuals with the interests of government and where appropriate analyzes the ethics of policy choices. By examining constitutional, common-law and statutory rights related to public health and health care students are prepared to compare such rights with those in other countries and in relation to the aspirational rights set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights concentrators must take LW751.
• SPH LW 725: Ethical Issues in Medicine and Public Health
  This course reviews the nature and scope of moral dilemmas and problematic decision making in public health, medicine, and health care. After a survey of ethical theory, the course focuses on a broad range of ethical concerns raised by the theory and practice of public health and medicine: the nature of health, disease and illness, health promotion and disease prevention; rights, access, and the limits of health care; the physician-patient relationship; truthtelling and confidentiality. Through a series of case studies, the course examines specific topics: the bioethics movement and its critiques; human experimentation; the role of institutional review boards; the concept and exercise of informed, voluntary consent; abortion, reproduction, genetic counseling and screening; euthanasia, death and dying; ethics committees; and international and cross-cultural perspectives.

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