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.
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SPH EH 797: Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health Applied Research Methods
This course prepares graduate students to address urban environmental challenges through hands-on training in a semester-long internship with the City of Boston, other cities, NGOs, and/or private sector organizations to learn how cities are handling urban environmental challenges, including but not limited to mitigation and adaptation to climate change, protecting vulnerable populations from air pollution, and issues related to water quality and quantity. -
SPH EH 799: Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health Colloquium
This course introduces students to the fields of Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health through weekly reading, discussions, and seminars. -
SPH EH 804: Field Methods in Exposure Science
The process of assessing exposure is a critical component of occupational and environmental epidemiology, of determining compliance with health and safety regulations, and in conducting human health risk assessments. This course in exposure assessment covers the basic concepts and methods of study design, data collection, and data analysis/interpretation. Students analyze relevant case studies and conduct a study in which they develop their own exposure assessment strategy, collect and analyze data, prepare a final report, and present their findings. This class requires an outside of class time commitment. -
SPH EH 805: Environmental Health Science, Policy and Law
This course teaches environmental and occupational health policy making. Our specific focus is on the examination of how scientific information (e.g., risk assessments, exposure analyses, epidemiologic studies, clinical case reports,) is used (or is not used) in policy decisions and whether these decisions explicitely protect people living in environmental justice communities. Students will learn how environmental health laws and regulations are made and challenged, and gain experience looking up laws, regulations and court decisions and will submit comments to timely rules in the public docket. Case studies feature international treaties, federal and state court cases, laws, regulations, and policies. Topic areas include air and water quality (including PFAS and microplastics), hazardous waste, environmental justice, worker safety, and climate change. -
SPH EH 811: Intro GIS for Public Health
This course teaches principles and applications of Geographical Information Systems to analyze public health and climate data. Skills learned include basic mapping, creation and management of geospatial databases, raster and vector data structures, network-based spatial analyses, spatial statistics tools, and StoryMaps for presentations. Students develop a semester long project applying GIS skills to their field of interest, past topics included: climate change adaptation & mitigation, infectious disease transmission, health and health access disparities, sustainability studies, disaster preparedness, chronic disease epidemiology. The course includes lectures and computer lab exercises, uses ArcGIS software, and requires computer access, either personal or in the computer lab. -
SPH EH 851: Advanced GIS for Public Health and Climate Research
The purpose of EH851: Advanced Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for Public Health is to develop each student's capacity to design and carry out public health and climate-related geospatial analyses working with multiple GIS platforms. Students will learn how to design, create, and use a wide variety of spatial information to support analytic modeling. The emphasis will be on data integration from multiple sources to support urban health and climate change analyses including vector and remote sensing datasets. Students will explore existing case studies on how GIS is used to conduct climate change, urban health and sustainbility geospatial modeling and learn how to develop and apply similar models in their own field of interest. Topics include database design and implementation, data management, geoprocessing concepts and tools, automation of data processing and model building. Students who complete this course should be able to participate as a public health geospatial analyst in professional environments and research-oriented project teams and to work with non-GIS experts to help them understand and carry out spatial analyses. -
SPH EH 866: Risk Assessment Methods
Nearly all regulatory authorities globally rely on risk assessment for decision- making. Students learn practical application of risk assessment methods to various environmental problems. The focus of the course is on human health risk assessment and teaches students to quantify the risk of adverse health effects from exposures to chemicals and microbiologicals in the environment. Students also can apply what they learn to evaluations of physical stressors . The strengths and weaknesses of risk assessment methods, the inherent uncertainties in each step, and the relationship between risk assessment and risk management are discussed. Students conduct a risk assessment and communicate process and findings in response to a community concern or other relevant topic. -
SPH EH 871: Advanced Topics in Environmental Health
Two and four credits Environmental Health advanced topics classes may be available in any given semester. See the print or web-based School of Public Health semester schedule for more information pertaining to the advanced topics course for a specific semester. -
SPH EH 872: Environmental Data and Exposure Modeling
Suppose you need to analyze the potential risks of a proposed point source or a possible replacement chemical in a consumer product. To do this, you need to know exposures to a pollutant but you can't measure them for everyone. What do you do? Estimation of exposure is an essential skill for building a sustainable economy, evaluating regulatory compliance or permits, risk assessment, environmental epidemiology, examining environmental justice and other purposes. Students will learn how to use publicly available data and models to estimate exposure. This hands-on course develops skills in the assumptions behind and the use of equilibrium models, compartmental models and dispersion models--all widely used in the field. Sample problems include estimation of exposure from eating contaminated fish using sediment PCB concentrations, exposure to flame retardants or PFAS from biomonitoring (blood, urine) data, inhalation of air pollutants emitted by an industrial facility. This course is suitable for PhD students as well as MPH students who meet the prerequisites. -
SPH EH 961: Directed Studies in Environmental Health
Directed Studies in Environmental Health 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. Directed studies with a non-SPH faculty member or an adjunct faculty member must be approved by and assigned to the department chair. To register, students must submit a paper registration form and signed directed study 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 EH 962: Directed Research in Environmental 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 in any SPH academic department. 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 EH 980: Continuing Study in Environmental Health
Doctoral students who have completed all academic course requirements, must register for Continuing Study every Fall and Spring semester until they have successfully defended their dissertation and applied to graduate from SPH. Students are charged the equivalent of two credits of tuition, student health insurance, and all relevant fees, and are certified as full time. EH980 is a non-graded, no academic credit status. All students registered for continuing study will attend EH Doctoral Seminars scheduled by the Director of Doctoral Education for EH. -
SPH EP 714: Introduction to Epidemiology
Epidemiology is a discipline that assesses the magnitude of public health problems, identifies the determinants of defects, disease and injury in human populations, and guides interventions designed to control or prevent them. The goals of this course are to: (1) introduce the basic principles and methods of epidemiology; (2) demonstrate their applicability to public health and research; and (3) provide fundamental skills needed to begin to interpret and critically evaluate literature relevant to public health professionals. Topics include measures of disease frequency and association, epidemiologic study designs, bias, confounding, random error, screening and causation. -
SPH EP 722: Data Collection Methods for Epidemiologic Research
This interactive and team oriented course will introduce students to common and uncommon data collection sources and methods used currently in epidemiological research. Existing medical, insurance, and vital records data sources will be discussed, along with traditional self, telephone, and in-person survey research methods. More novel approaches that include internet based surveys, ecological momentary assessments, and social media will be covered as well. Lastly, we will touch on the complexities involved in the collection and storage of biological specimens. For all methods, issues associated with data quality control, validity and reliability will be covered. Students will practice developing their own surveys and other data collection tools and will evaluate data collection methods published within the scientific literature. Students will also learn how to conceptualize and write as their final assignment the entire data collection methods section of a NIH or similar grant proposal. -
SPH EP 730: Epidemiology of Vaccine Preventable Diseases
This course provides students with a fundamental understanding of the epidemiology and control of vaccine-preventable diseases. This will be accomplished by focusing on a different vaccine-preventable disease each week, and using that disease to illustrate epidemiologic principles and methods to measure vaccine safety, efficacy, and impact; and to understand current issues around public acceptability. Emphasis will be placed on study design, sources of bias, and current controversies. The majority of class time will focus on in-class discussions where students will take turns presenting to their peers, and will practice and receive feedback in the critical review and design of epidemiologic studies. -
SPH EP 740: Introduction to Epidemiology of Aging
This 2-credit course introduces public health students to major research topics regarding age-related diseases, disorders, and disabilities, as well as the special considerations in the design and execution of epidemiologic studies in this field. The main objectives of each session are to 1) use web-based or public-use data on the incidence, prevalence, risk factors, and health consequences of the disease or condition to describe why it is important to study in elderly adults; 2) critically review 1-2 articles to understand the current state of knowledge on the topic; and 3) examine the special methodological issues that conducting studies of the topic in an elderly study population pose. These objectives will be met by brief student presentations each week of the epidemiology of the disease/condition, lectures by researchers who are performing studies on that condition, and journal club discussions of relevant articles that students will critique. Students will synthesize this information in a short (8-10 page) grant proposal for a study on the prevention or treatment of a disease/condition that affects elderly adults. -
SPH EP 748: Drug Epidemiology (formerly EP830)
With the participation of active researchers in pharmacoepidemiology, this course addresses a range of study designs and analytic techniques for observational studies on the utilization, safety and effectiveness of pharmaceuticals. Students will develop an understanding of how to plan, implement, analyze and criticize pharmacoepidemiologic studies. Lectures will provide methodological background and will cover applied issues typically encountered in pharmacoepidemiology. In addition, students will become acquainted with the drug approval process in the United States, and with issues particularly relevant or unique to the epidemiologic study of medications (e.g., risk management, post marketing surveillance). -
SPH EP 749: Applications to Introductory Epidemiology
This course is designed for students who want to gain practical experience articulating epidemiologic research questions, analyzing data, and reporting results. This course is closely synchronized with EP714 (Introduction of Epidemiology) and applies knowledge of introductory epidemiologic principles to the analysis of observational data. The goals of this course are to (1) conceptualize research questions and develop testable hypotheses; (2) access and utilize data to calculate, interpret, and present disease measures; (3) apply introductory concepts of study design to evaluate peer-reviewed research; and (4) practice synthesizing and summarizing data through preparation of a scientific abstract, and critiquing and editing the work of peers. -
SPH EP 751: Cardiovascular Epidemiology
The goal of this course is to enable students to understand major aspects of cardiovascular epidemiology and current strategies for primary and secondary prevention of major cardiovascular diseases (i.e. stroke, heart attack, heart failure or hypertension). The course concentrates on physiologic mechanisms leading to atherosclerosis; traditional and novel CHD risk factors; prediction models for CVD; and the role of lifestyle, dietary, and genetic factors on the development of CVD. In addition, relevant historical breakthrough and current controversies in CVD are discussed using the latest publication from lay press and peer-reviewed journals. A fair amount of time is devoted to acquiring skills in scientific writing and data interpretation. These latter skills are used by the students to design and complete a CVD epidemiology project on a topic of their choosing. Each student (group of students) then presents his/her completed project in class during the last 2 sessions of the course. The course is taught by the course Director and other senior investigators who are experts in different areas of cardiovascular disease. -
SPH EP 752: Cancer Epidemiology
This intermediate-level course develops important concepts and methods in the discipline of cancer epidemiology. A major focus is on the descriptive epidemiology of cancer incidence and mortality in the U.S. and globally. This course explores risk factors, including genetic, behavioral, environmental, and social determinants, in relation to several types of cancer. Methodological issues relating to the design, conduct, and data analysis of studies on cancer are discussed through weekly journal clubs and class lectures. Students will build skills in conducting literature reviews and critically evaluating and interpreting the findings of classic and cutting-edge research articles. Students completing this course will understand the basic principles of cancer epidemiology and will be able to apply them in reading the literature and participating in research projects.
