PH 125:

Introduction to Qualitative Methods for Public Health & Healthcare Studies

(0.50 unit)

This course introduces students to qualitative design and methods in public health and health care as a stand-alone approach and in combination with quantitative approaches (mixed methods) for research, evaluation, and needs assessment. Topics include an overview of qualitative traditions, distinguishing between qualitative and quantitative approaches, when to use qualitative or mixed methods designs, how to design a qualitative study including quality standards, common qualitative methods, data collection, qualitative analysis, and presenting results.

PH 101:

Inferential Epidemiology 2

(0.50 unit)

As a continuation of PH100, students learn to recognize the purpose, structure, strengths and weaknesses of common study designs: decision and cost-effectiveness analysis, before-after, cross-sectional, qualitative and mixed-methods studies. Weekly journal clubs establish a critical assessment framework to determine the relevance and validity of published studies. Students apply this knowledge through continued collaborative writing of a systematic review proposal, which includes refinement of a search strategy and selection of three studies that fulfill inclusion criteria.

PH 140:

Applying Health Statistics

(1.5 units)

Students will critically appraise studies of analytic epidemiology. After classifying a study’s design and acknowledging its inherent limitations, students will trace what outcome measures (e.g., risks) and effect measures (e.g., risk ratios) were used to describe the problem and assess impact. Students will appraise the choice of these numbers, how the authors explained them, and whether their conclusions were justified. Weekly laboratory sessions allow students to conduct their own analyses with Stata® on real-world datasets.

PH 115:

Finance and Strategy in Value-based Public Health and Healthcare

(1 unit)

Changing U.S. health policy has shifted the focus from volume to value, increased revenue and cost pressures, and pushed leaders to do more with less. Managing for program outcomes and financial soundness requires making value enhancing decisions. Students will interpret and analyze financial statements (financial accounting), develop skills in operational, capital, and project budgeting (managerial accounting), appreciate principles of shared decision-making and coproduction, and apply principles of leadership, including creating a vision and guiding decision-making.

PH 111:

Medical Care Epidemiology

(0.50 unit)

Students will learn to see how their own and others’ mental models have acted as a barrier to addressing racial, socioeconomic and geographic disparities in health and health care and how applying curiosity, healthy skepticism, systems thinking, and basic epidemiologic principles to both public health and medical care have contributed to advancing our understanding of how to improve health system performance.

PH 117:

Intro to Quality Improvement

(0.50 unit)

This course develops systems thinking in health care and public health. Students explore various perspectives on healthcare services, including coproduction of health and health care, connections between communities and health systems, and making change in complex system. Students will learn and apply basic improvement skills and will be exposed to a variety of approaches and examples. Implications of health care systems on social inequities and structural bias are a central focus.

PH 112:

Medical Care and the Corporation (elective)

(0.75 unit)

This course is intended to 1) illustrate the applicability of management concepts and techniques to the health care and biotechnology industries; 2) enhance the ability of managers to serve as trustees of health care organizations; and 3) demonstrate how corporate managers can exercise judgment and control over expenditures for health care benefits while protecting the health of their employees. The characteristics and components of the health care system and their interactions and determinants will be analyzed. The history of corporate and governmental intervention in health care will be reviewed. The importance of understanding the medical market dynamics and the options for data-driven strategies for market reform will be stressed. Case examples will highlight the use of new analytic techniques for understanding and managing the medical markets.

This course is cross-listed with Tuck School of Business in their MBA program.

PH 130:

Ethics (elective)

(0.50 unit)

This highly interactive, short course is designed to give students an overview of health care ethics, including recognizing and responding to contemporary clinical, research, and organizational ethical conflicts in health care. The students will become familiar with the application of ethics principles to today’s health care ethics challenges faced by health care professionals. Through the discussion of case studies, students will build practical ethical reasoning skills and strategies for dealing with frequently encountered ethics issues, as well as approaches for anticipating and decreasing the presence of ethics conflicts. Students will also gain an understanding of the structure and function of a Hospital Ethics Committees and an Institutional Review Board/Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects. Emphasis throughout the short course will be on critical thinking, real-world application and ethical decision-making in a professional environment. 

Winterim Electives

(0.50 unit each)

Short seminar electives in health policy, quality improvement, and health services research will be available during the Winterim Seminar Term that runs November 30-December 18, 2020.

PH 118:

Community Health: Needs Assessment, Program Design, and Evaluation

(1.25 units)

This course develops defining skills in public health: assessing a community’s needs, designing programs to address those needs, and evaluating the effectiveness of those programs. Students will learn the principles of these processes. Working in teams, students will evaluate a non-profit hospital’s Community Health Needs Assessment, the programs the hospital designed in response, and the evaluation process the hospital employs. Students will report the strengths and opportunities for improvement they identify to hospital staff.

The Applied Practice Experience (APE) component can be met in this course.

PH 126:

Statistical Measurement and Analysis (elective)

(1 unit)

This course explores the history and theory of statistical process control and its application to health care. Specific topics covered include: development of measures; data collection; graphical display of data; the theory and construction of control charts for means, proportions, counts and rare events; statistical testing with control charts; analysis of means. Benchmarking and an organizational approach to measurement and improvement are discussed. Different study designs for improvement work are explored. The course emphasizes application of theories and principles through the use of case studies, small group exercises and interactive discussions with guest presenters. Lab exercises, a group project and a take-home final exam are required elements of the course.

PH 131:

Health Communications (elective)

(0.50 unit)

Health care decisions are complicated – really complicated – and frequently lack evidence to determine a ‘one best’ course of treatment. As such, patient‐centered health communications increasingly are recognized as a critical means to facilitate health care decisions that provide patients with the care they need. The objectives of this short course are to 1) engage you to think broadly about the impact of communication at the patient, institutional, and population level; 2) to gain skills and experience related to the design and development of decision support tools and methods; 3) to understand the challenges involved in implementing decision support into practice at both at the institution and international level.

PH 120:

Health Coproduction (elective)

(0.50 unit)

Coproduction has been defined as the interdependent work of users and professionals to design, create, develop, deliver, assess and improve the health of individuals and populations, through mutual respect and partnership, that invites participants’ strengths and expertise. At the core, coproduction relies on shared decision making, and to operationalize the approach, a learning health system approach is advocated.

PH 122:

Survey Methods (elective)

(1 unit)

This course introduces the basic skills needed to conduct and present survey research. It will focus on two aspects of such research: designing and administering a survey (primary data collection); and accessing, analyzing and reporting on data from publicly available national survey data (secondary data analysis). Topics covered will include survey design, sampling, validity, reliability, data collection, analysis, interpretation and reporting of results. To reinforce practical skills, the course will include weekly computer labs, research in progress sessions to critique draft survey instruments, and a journal club to critically read articles reporting survey results.

PH 141:

Regression & Other Approaches (elective)

(1.5 units)

The epidemiological portion examines methods used to evaluate the role of chance, bias, and confounding in epidemiological studies. Topics include sources and definitions of bias and confounding, analytic techniques, e.g., stratified analyses, Mantel-Hanszel techniques, uses of logistic regression analysis in cohort and case control studies, and introduction to life table analysis using both Kaplan-Meir and regression techniques. Other topics include planning data management and analysis in epidemiological studies and estimating sample size. Lectures are illustrated by reference to epidemiological data.

PH 148:

International Health Systems (elective)

(0.50 unit)

This course provides an examination of the U.S. health care system through a comparison with other countries. This critique will challenge the student’s view of U.S. health care and will establish a foundation for further inquiry into non U.S. health care systems. Students will be able to identify promising ideas that could be applied to the U.S. Students will also understand generalizable concepts of health systems that are necessary to work or learn in international settings.

PH 151:

Environmental Health Policy (elective)

(0.50 unit)

This course engages students in the exploration of major environmental and occupational health issues through application of the basic tools of environmental science including epidemiologic methods, toxicology and risk assessment. Participants will examine the relationship between environmental and occupational exposures and human disease with emphasis on the interface of science and policy, the role of regulatory agencies and environmental risk communication. Topics include air and water quality, hazardous waste, radiation, heavy metals, food safety, environmental pathogens, and clinical occupational medicine. Faculty use a variety of teaching tools including lectures, audiovisual media, case studies, guest experts, and assigned readings/exercises. As a culminating project, students will author an environmental policy white paper based on a synthesis of scientific evidence.

PH 124:

Advanced Topics in Healthcare Improvement (elective)

(1.5 units)

Participants will work in partnership with selected managed care settings throughout the United States. Specifically, this course will offer participants an opportunity to identify the processes involved in managing a panel of patients, learn the knowledge and skills providers need to manage panels and provide optimal patient care, identify approaches for taking costs out of the care while maintaining or improving quality and enhancing customer satisfaction, understand the difference between the efforts for improvement of care at the front line and in the front office and how they may be related, and identify some of the barriers to making the health of a population better.

The Integrative Learning Experience (ILE) component can be met in this course.

PH 147:

Advanced Health Services Research (elective)

(1.5 units)

This course will develop student analytic competencies to the level necessary to conceptualize, plan, carry out, and effectively communicate small research projects in patient care, epidemiology, or health services. Lectures, demonstrations, and labs will be used to integrate and extend methods introduced in other TDI courses. The course will also cover new methods in epidemiology, health services and data science. The students will use national publicly available data and synthetic research datasets resembling Medicare claims and electronic health record data in classroom lab exercises and course assignments. Course topics focus on key aspects observational research including cohort derivation, multilevel analyses, small area analysis, and network analysis. Practical skill areas will include programming in STATA and/or R, developing an analytic workflow, data visualization (designing tables and figures), and data structure and management. Emphasis is on becoming independent in research processes. The instructors will mentor students as they develop their own analytic projects.

The Integrative Learning Experience (ILE) component can be met in this course.

PH 121:

Decision and Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (elective) 

(1.5 units)

This course covers the fundamental principles and mechanics of decision analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis. Topics covered in the course include basics of probability (including Bayes’ Theorem), structuring decision problems as decision trees and Markov models, components of preference (value preference, time preference, and risk preference), valuing multidimensional outcomes, evaluating decision trees, sensitivity analysis, value of information, and basic principles of cost-effectiveness analysis. The course has a weekly lab that involves use of decision analysis software to reinforce concepts presented in class. Labs are also used for development, progress review and discussion of small group decision analysis projects, which culminate in formal presentations the last week of class. Weekly problem sets are also used to reinforce the concepts presented in class.

The Integrative Learning Experience (ILE) component can be met in this course.

PH 116:

Approaches to Studying Determinants of Health Inequities (elective)

(1.5 units)

Our health is determined by many interconnected forces driven by the social, political, economic, and environmental conditions under which we live and work. How we understand and experience illness and health is just as much a product of our context as it is of our biology. Theories can help organize our rationale for studying the determinants of health while research methods help us measure and interpret what we learn. Ethical issues abound as we attempt to understand and address the inequalities that are pervasive throughout our contexts. This course will use case studies, scientific literature, documentary footage, and journalism to appreciate the complexity of studying the determinants of health while exploring some of the methodological solutions that have advanced public health research. Students will have an opportunity to work on at least two different topics with their class and one of their own choosing.

The Integrative Learning Experience (ILE) component can be met in this course.

PH 113:

Health Policy (elective)

(1.5 units)

This course is intended to further students understanding of health policy and financing in the United States through study of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Specific areas of study will include accountable care organizations, health information technology, employer and individual insurance mandates, comparative effectiveness research, and insurance expansions. Learning takes place through readings of selected manuscripts, lecture and discussion, and assignments.

The Integrative Learning Experience (ILE) component can be met in this course.

PH 114:

Contemporary Issues in Biotechnology: The Practitioner’s Perspective (elective)

(0.50 unit)

In this course, students will gain an appreciation for the biotechnology industry, its premise and continued promise, as well as what is required for biotechnology entrepreneurs in the 21st century to attract investment capital. Areas ripe for investment and development will be explored, as will lessons that have been learned over the past four decades that have been witness to the creation of thousands of biotechnology companies, and the very way that innovation is supported by the pharmaceutical industry and regulated by worldwide governments.