Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular term. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• SPH PM 755: Health Care Delivery Systems: Issues and Innovations
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH719) consent of instructor. - This course is designed to introduce students to the complex organizational and delivery aspects of many levels of health care. Students are introduced to the structure of financing the health care system, including concepts such as Patient-Centered Medical Home, Accountable Care Organizations, care coordination, the health care safety net, and value-based delivery reforms. Elements of the class are applied through case-based learning and a semester-long project where students select a health care problem of their choice to research and plausibly solve through policy or a quality improvement project. Students will also work in groups on a case study presentation which will provide opportunities to apply the concepts learned in class to current issues in health care delivery. Written and group work, a midterm exam, a presentation, and a final paper compose the graded assignments during this course.
• SPH PM 760: Health Law, Policy and Policymaking
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH719) or consent of instructor. - This course is an introduction to the institutions, processes, and politics of United States government; how they were designed and how they actually operate today. The first month will be spent building a foundation of political science and legal theory dealing with concepts of power, institutional design, representation, interests and public opinion. Each subsequent week will feature an in-depth look at how government approaches a given issue. We will focus on instances of policymaking that have shaped health care and population health in America. This approach will help students not only become familiar with what happened, but why. History is not inevitable. Examining moments of policymaking will equip students to not only understand but also to anticipate and influence government policymaking.
• SPH PM 785: Mental Health Advocacy
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH719) or consent of instructor. - This two credit course is designed to help students understand how advocacy works in the field of mental health (and substance use), how it has succeeded and failed in this field historically, and how it is similar to and different from other advocacy movements. Each student will identify an advocacy project in the field and develop a proposal describing what it would take to execute it. In seven short weeks, it would be difficult to expect every project to be executed, but students will learn strategies for the planning, vision, and coalition building needed for their Advocacy Projects. In a word this is a course about HOW a needed change would be enacted. Your job is to identify a change that needs to happen and to work to see how it would happen.
• SPH PM 795: Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Policy and Politics
  Alcohol, tobacco and other drug (ATOD) use are among the leading causes of death and disability in the U.S. and globally. While access to effective treatment for ATOD addiction is important, we will never "treat" our way out of these problems -- as the tobacco experience has shown, it is far more effective and cost- effective to use policy as a lever to reduce and prevent ATOD use and related harms. Drawing on examples both from the U.S. and other countries, the course will review key lessons from existing public health research for ATOD policies, and along the way examine different methods for assessing and evaluating these policies. The course will take a "deep dive" into each of tobacco, alcohol, cannabis and "other drug" policies, and equip students for a final project, deploying public health research tools, literature and insights to address a current drug policy issue of their choosing and what it would "take," including analysis of the effects on public health, political context, key stakeholders, impact on social justice and equity, and responses to key opposition arguments, in order to achieve their recommended policy change.
• SPH PM 802: Pharmaceutical Management, Policy and Practice in the 21st Century: A Case Study Approach
  Graduate Prerequisites: MPH integrated core courses. - This course gives an overview of the pharmaceutical industry domestically and internationally in a public health context. The course will synthesize and integrate key pharmaceutical topics with a focus on health policy and management. Topics include the functions of the FDA, research and development of drugs, government regulation and patents, access to drugs, vaccines, Medicare Part D, Accountable Care Act and the use of large pharmaceutical datasets to investigate the effectiveness of drugs. This course will use a case study approach targeted to real world decision making problems raised by the pharmaceutical industry.
• SPH PM 804: Digital Disruption In Health: The Effects Of Health Information Technologies On Polices, Delivery,
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH719) or consent from instructor. - Globally recognized digital expert and professor, David L. Rogers, argues that digital transformation for organizations is not about the technology and tools that are often over emphasized when approaching a shift to a digitally enabled- world, but instead is more about strategy and a new way of thinking. According to Rogers, there are five domains of strategy to approach digital transformation: Customer, Competition, Data, Innovation, and Value. This course will address both--learning about the tools and technologies in healthcare, while also understanding how to use those to strategically transform care including improvements in equity, efficiency, effectiveness, and patient and provider satisfaction. This course will introduce students to the policy and application of digital tools and models across the healthcare delivery system, including learning about and critically assessing concepts such as patient engagement, interoperability, telehealth, artificial intelligence, big data and analytics, health information technology (HIT) adoption and communication, data security, among others. Students demonstrate their knowledge through a team project, presenting their own proposal on using digital tools and technology to transform the healthcare sector. Case studies, readings, and interactive exercises in class round out topic knowledge and application.
• SPH PM 807: Introduction to Cost Effectiveness Analysis
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH717 & SPHPH719) or PM814. Cannot count both PM807 and PM855 for credit. - This course examines the use of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) in health policy and medical decision-making. Students gain a working knowledge of theoretical and practical issues encountered in conducting and applying CEA, i.e. identifying costs and relative effectiveness and consequences of health care interventions (e.g., pharmaceuticals), prevention programs, and policies. Approaches to formulating the problem, adopting a perspective for the analysis, measuring costs, evaluating consequences, discounting, and reflecting uncertainty are discussed. Emphasis is on acquiring skills necessary for becoming informed consumers of CEA, learning to appraise published literature, and developing simple cost-effectiveness models. Case studies demonstrate the use of CEAs. Exercises highlight methodological issues and the development of models in several in-class computer lab sessions. The computer lab sessions offer hands-on experience with the design of models in Microsoft Excel. The class is appropriate for students in the Pharmaceuticals Program. Students who take PM855 may not take PM807.
• SPH PM 820: Introduction to Quality Measurement and Evaluation
  This course sets out to answer a number of foundational and application-based questions for health services researchers and other health professionals focusing on evaluation of health care quality: What are some frameworks within which we can measure, evaluate, and improve quality of care? How we do reliably and validly measure quality? How do we use different types of data to measure and report on different dimensions of quality? What are ways in which quality data may be aggregated and what controversies surround those approaches? How do we appropriately profile providers and systems, and how do we best create and interpret composite measures in doing so? Throughout the semester, students will be able to answer these questions and apply this learning to practical data exercises and case studies.
• SPH PM 822: Advanced Quantitative Methods for Health and Social Policy Research
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPM843) or permission of the instructor. Through this course, doctoral students and advanced masters students will learn how to use quantitative data to answer questions of interest in health services research. Students will learn to distinguish between descriptive, predictive, and causal research questions and how data are used to answer these different types of questions. Rather than presenting a laundry list of specific techniques to memorize, the course will build intuition and facility with foundational concepts that unify different methods. We will cover several different approaches to causal inference, emphasizing the link between study design, analysis approach, and the assumptions required for causal interpretation. Students completing this course will be able to implement regression-based analyses in their own future work; to take higher level courses; and to read quantitative literature with a critical eye. The course will integrate in-class lectures and computer labs with at-home problem sets featuring analysis of real-world data.
• SPH PM 827: Strategic Management of Healthcare Organizations
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH719) or consent of instructor. - This course is designed to make the student aware of well-established and innovative best practices that are necessary for making strategic decisions in the competitive environment of health care. Each session offers an opportunity to explore various aspects of formulating, monitoring, and leading strategies while considering the complexity of the structure and processes in healthcare. Real-life projects engage the student in making evidence based and value driven decisions while being cognizant of culture, regulations and the dynamic nature of the industry. Discussions from the readings, case studies and assignments focus on developing systems thinking and strategic intuition that is vigilant of the drivers of change, leadership skills and countermeasures by competitors.
• SPH PM 828: Advanced Qualitative Methods
  Graduate Prerequisites: SPH SB818 or GMS MA 710 or consent of instructor. - This course will focus on the use of qualitative methods in understanding outcomes of care, such as patient-centered perspectives on illness and health care; processes of care, such as doctor-patient interactions and communication; and the organization of care, such as the impact of different organizational structures on the quality of care. Students will develop skills in the use of qualitative methods in health services research, including the procedures of focus groups, the use of in-depth interviews, naturalistic observations of health care practices, and ethnographic studies of health care organizations and client communities. The course is part of the PhD program in Health Services Research, but will be of interest to other students who wish to learn about utilizing qualitative methods in their research.
• SPH PM 832: Operations Management in Health Care
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH717 & SPHPH719 & SPHPH718) or consent of instructor. - This course is designed to focus on the field of operations management (OM) in healthcare. Students will learn to apply OM principles to develop more effective operational processes, mitigate risks, and improve quality. Discussions from the text, case studies and assignments will focus on strategies and techniques of quality improvement processes, project management, work-flow and system design, and capacity planning. Additionally students will explore the intricacy, complexity and dynamics of logistics in healthcare. An industry based project will enable students to engage and implement several of the tools learned in class.
• SPH PM 833: Health Economics
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH719) or consent of instructor. - This course develops the tools of basic microeconomic analysis and applies them to key health policy issues. It emphasizes the trade-offs involved in various choices within the health care economy, with particular attention to examination of issues related to the debate between pro-market and government regulatory approaches to health care policy. Topics include the role of risk and uncertainty in health and health care, the industrial organization of the health care sector, and how payment systems affect the incentives and behavior of patients, insurers, and providers.
• SPH PM 834: Planning and Regulating to Fix Health Care
  Graduate Prerequisites: SPHPH719 or consent of instructor. - Failures of competitive markets in health care have sparked public planning and regulation. But these, in turn, have not been very successful in addressing problems of access, cost, appropriateness/quality, or caregiver configuration. Examining cases of persisting health problems such as childhood lead poisoning and quality of nursing home care, this course dissects what has worked and why. We consider ways in which planning can be a guide to effective action, not a pretext for inaction. We examine ways to quantify harm caused by a problem, analyze causes of the harm, develop policies and programs to address those causes, and analyze the efficacy, cost, political feasibility, and managerial feasibility of specific programs. Each student prepares a realistic plan, grounded in evidence, to ameliorate harm to people's health caused by a persisting threat.
• SPH PM 835: Lean Management in Healthcare
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH719 OR SPHPH720 OR SPHPH717) or consent of instructor. - This course is designed to prepare students to plan and successfully implement lean management driven processes in health care organizations. It teaches lean principles and provides the opportunity to complete a lean managed project. It therefore uses a blended format that includes a week long intensive program for training on lean concepts and tools, followed by a semester long field work on a quality improvement project using lean methodology with online and personal support.
• SPH PM 839: Implementation Science: Linking Research to Practice
  Implementation science is commonly defined as the study of methods and strategies to promote the uptake of interventions that have proven effective in routine practice, with the aim of improving population health. Often interventions tested in traditional research studies that are found to be effective do not translate into positive outcomes in practice or cannot be practically applied. Alternatively, other interventions that have potential to improve care will not the effectively implemented without practical tools to aid the implementation. Integrating research into practice is a major challenge, both during the period of a study and beyond. This course will address the complexities of integrating research and practice and of translating research into practice. Students will learn about the background and concepts of implementation research and implementation science and how they fit into health services research, key components of implementation research proposal and how they are reviewed, what evidence is in an evidence- based intervention and how evidence is identified and evaluated, frameworks to guide implementation studies, different implementation study designs, implementation outcomes, and about how to balance intervention fidelity with feasibility, as well as how interventions can be adapted for different populations and settings.
• SPH PM 840: Analysis of Current Health Policy Issues
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH719) AND (SPHPH717 OR SPHEP714) - The purpose of this course is to arm students with the skills to debate, define, and defend health policy proposals. We will explore, in depth, several current health policy problems. The course will take an analytic case approach, identifying policy options and tools, then gathering information and applying data to evaluate outcomes, costs; winners and losers. Methods for finding and accessing information on the Internet are emphasized. This is a capstone course meant to be taken in the student's last semester.
• SPH PM 842: Health Economics for Health and Social Policy Research
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH719) or PM814, one semester of calculus or consent of instructor - This course provides an understanding of principles of microeconomics and applied microeconomic analysis of public health policy issues sufficient to comprehend and conduct health services research. The over-arching philosophical issues facing the post health care reform world and the arguments defining the debate between pro-market and government regulatory approaches are addressed. The main focus is on domestic health economics; however, analytic methods developed in the course are applicable to foreign health care systems. Students may not take both PM833 and PM842 for degree credit.
• SPH PM 844: Health Policy and Policy-making for Public Health Researchers
  Graduate Prerequisites: For doctoral students in the health services research program. Others only with instructor approval. - This doctoral level course will offer students in the Health Services Research program an in-depth look at major health policy debates. Particular attention will be paid to the factors affecting policy making and the role of scholarship in this process. The role of public health in policy debates or the lack thereof will be an ongoing theme throughout the semester. The course begins with a foundation on the policy making process at the federal, state, and local levels. Using these tools, students will examine the history of health reform in America and abroad, including the development and implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the challenges and opportunities of payment and delivery reforms, the role of the Veteran's Health Administration, and mental and behavioral health. Students will apply theoretical concepts from the opening weeks to produce multiple types of deliverables about an issue of their choosing, including a blog post translating academic research for a broad policy audience, a literature review intended for researchers or potential funders, a manuscript in the style of a New England Journal of Medicine perspective intended for journalists and anyone participating in policy debates, and legislative testimony intended for policymakers.
• SPH PM 846: Advanced Quantitative Policy and Program Implementation and Evaluation
  Graduate Prerequisites: (SPHPM822 & SPHPM828) or by permission of the instructor. - * The aim of this course is to provide advanced level graduate students with applied skills in quantitative policy analysis and program implementation and evaluation. To do so, we will review and further explore several topics of causal inference and research design that are partially introduced in other quantitative methods courses. Moreover, this course exposes students in an in- depth way to research projects completed by leading scholars in the field. The specific methods covered in this course include logic models, implementation evaluation, randomized experiments, and natural experiments applied to a broad spectrum of public policy problems and solutions. The course will integrate multiple skill sets, including quantitative modelling, statistical programming, research design, and proposal writing.