PH 224:

Enhancing Communication & Teamwork

(2 credits)

Conflict is inevitable – we negotiate our differences every day, whether we are public health practitioners, clinicians, administrators or researchers. Working effectively in public health and health care depends on our ability to manage conflict effectively, learn how to understand others’ perspectives and interests, and both give and receive feedback. If poorly managed or avoided, conflict reduces productivity, undermines trust and leads to worse outcomes. If viewed as an opportunity to explore the concerns and different perspectives that others may have, working through these differences can enable individuals and teams to come up with better solutions and work more effectively. Students will learn the basic principles and skills of how to engage effectively with differences and conflicts, understand the strengths and weaknesses of how you tend to approach conflict in your life, and provide you a framework for thinking about both communication and negotiation.

PH 201:

Foundations of Public Health

(9 credits)

This course will explore core content areas beginning with exploring commonly used health behavior models (e.g., Evans and Stoddart, Social Ecological Model). This course covers the following topics:

- Health Models, Measures, Policy
- Determinants, Designs, Data
- Healthcare Economics
- Intro to QI

Emphasis will be on understanding healthcare delivery systems and the linkages to social and behavioral determinants of health. Students will also receive an introduction to research design and program implementation, basic concepts of supply/demand curves as well as an overview of the health insurance marketplace and healthcare payment models, and an introduction to quality improvement frameworks for improving health and healthcare. Students completing this course will be fluent in health care policy language, the systems that govern payment and service delivery as well as the individual and community factors that impact population health. Students will also have the skills to assess quality and applicability of research for use in practice. 

PH 210:

Epidemiology of Health & Healthcare

(3 credits)

This course introduces the basic principles of epidemiology, including formulation of the research question, choice of study subjects, measures of disease frequency, assessment of exposure and disease status, study design (cross-sectional studies, prospective and retrospective cohort studies, case-control studies, and clinical trials), measures of association between exposure and disease (risk ratio and risk difference measures) and causal inference. Taught as lectures and assigned exercises, this course stresses the practical applications of epidemiological techniques.

PH 212:

Biostatistics

(3 credits)

This course is designed to develop skills for interpreting and appraising statistical information. These concepts are intertwined with considerations of the purpose, structure, strengths, and weaknesses of common study designs as applied in epidemiology. Students will continue expanding and honing their skills for critically appraising the relevance and validity of findings, yet this course emphasizes summarizing data, calculating effect sizes, quantifying random error, and interpreting graphs and tables, effect sizes, and random error. Through readings, exercises, self-assessments, live interactions, videos, and two-way feedback, students will have a range of modalities by which to explore the material and gain greater mastery of the primary content. In addition, the course aims to facilitate continued linkages to other foundational content through the use of examples that explore topics such as environmental and behavioral determinants of health.

PH 214:

Qualitative & Survey Research Methods

(3 credits)

This course introduces the basic principles of qualitative research design and analysis using grounded theory along with the fundamentals of developing and analyzing surveys. Students will gain experience with interviewing and focus group facilitation, survey design and sampling, data collection, analysis, interpretation and reporting of results. In addition to gaining knowledge about primary research methods, students will be introduced to the use and analysis of data from publicly available national survey data.

PH 233:

Applied Improvement Methods

(3 credits)

This course explores the knowledge, methods, and skills necessary to effect the continual improvement of the quality and value of health care. Participants will become familiar with the theory of statistical process control and the development of measures for improvement work. Benchmarking and organizational approaches to measurement and improvement will be discussed, and a variety of study designs for improvement work will be explored. Participants will be offered an opportunity to connect that knowledge, and those methods and skills, to their personal life and work.

PH 226:

Introduction to Environmental Health

(1 credit)

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.

PH 222:

Ethics in Health and Healthcare

(1 credit)

This course is designed to give students an overview of healthcare ethics, including recognizing and responding to contemporary clinical, research, and organizational ethical conflicts in health care. 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. Emphasis throughout the course will be on critical thinking, real-world application, and ethical decision-making in a professional environment.

PH 216:

Applied Epidemiology

(2 credits)

Students will build upon the content of previous courses in epidemiology and biostatistics to strengthen their ability to find, analyze, interpret, synthesize and communicate health data. Because epidemiologists are often concerned with the presence or absence of a disease, this course will focus on research questions that involve odds ratios. The course will provide a working knowledge of unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios, confounding and effect modification, two critical concepts in epidemiology. By the end of this course, students will be able to find available health data to address epidemiological research questions, apply appropriate descriptive statistics to summarize such health data, and interpret, synthesize and communicate results to epidemiological research questions that involve odds ratios, confounding and effect modification in writing.

PH 242:

Health Services Administration

(3 credits)

Recent shifts in US healthcare policy toward reimbursement structures that incent high quality and efficient care shift the focus from volume to value, increase revenue and cost pressures, and push leaders in public health to do more with less. Managing for program outcomes and financial soundness has become ever more demanding. The goal of the Health Services Administration course is to enable students to make value enhancing decisions. This course begins with teaching students the basics of financial accounting and understanding financial statements, then turns to managerial accounting to develop skills related to operational budgeting, capital budgeting, and project budgeting, and then ties these management skills to the student’s own work, focusing on the business case for the Practicum.

PH 252:

Health Policy

(3 credits)

This course provides students with an understanding of health policy and financing in the United States. Topics include navigating the policy landscape, analyzing the ramification of various types of policy, assessing existing programs and policy, and understanding the economic and financial considerations of implementing policy.

PH 258:

International Health Systems

(1 credit)

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 228:

Communication for Health and Health Care

(2 credits)

This course explores the role of communication in shaping health and health care at the individual, organizational, and community level. From the doctor-patient dyad, to national public health campaigns, communication is critical to improving and changing health behaviors and health outcomes. This course will help you understand how communication shapes the exchange of information, the formation of attitudes and beliefs, and people's health behavior. We also will explore the role of health campaigns and health promotion.

PH 238:

Leading Change in Health Policy

(3 credits)

This course introduces the skills and techniques required to research and develop health programs at the community, state, and national levels. Students will be presented with the concepts, processes and techniques used in health program planning, implementation, and evaluation. The students will engage in planning, implementation and evaluation exercises. The course will emphasize the importance of teams and partnerships in successful health promotion programs.

PH 256:

Strategy for Population Health

(2 credits)

This culminating course will provide students an opportunity to synthesize learning across their program. Organized around case-based learning, students will learn about and apply frameworks for formulating and evaluating strategic decisions, tools for identifying opportunities and evaluating alternative paths, and methods for encouraging innovation.