How do we know what we know? This course guides students in reading, interpreting, and evaluating peer-reviewed original research in public health. Students will develop an understanding of what authors want to communicate and critical appraisal skills which will allow them to form their own independent conclusions.

While the health and wellbeing of the nation has improved overall, racial, ethnic, gender and sexuality disparities in morbidity and mortality persist. To successfully address growing disparities, it is important to understand social determinants of health and translate current knowledge into specific strategies to undo health inequalities. This course will explore social justice as a philosophical underpinning of public health and will consider the etiology of disease rooted in social conditions.

Injuries are an important public health problem and the leading cause of death for U.S. citizens under the age of 45 years. This 3-part course presents a public health approach to understanding and preventing both unintentional and violent injuries, with a focus on the policy tools available for reducing the burden of injury.

The World Health Organization describes climate change as the biggest public health threat of the 21st century. This course will provide an overview of the key impacts of climate change on population health. We will discuss current impacts and projected future impacts through the 21st century, with a focus on climate justice and health equity.

The World Health Organization describes climate change as the biggest public health threat of the 21st century. This course will provide an overview of the key impacts of climate change on population health. We will discuss current impacts and projected future impacts through the 21st century, with a focus on climate justice and health equity. We will additionally cover difficulties in communicating climate change risks to the public and strategies for adaptation and mitigation to prevent and/or lessen projected impacts of climate change on health.

This course is designed to teach fundamentals of toxicology with an emphasis on food toxicology. Topics to be discussed include mechanisms of toxicity, absorption, metabolism, distribution and excretion of food toxins, dose-response relationships, major mechanisms of toxicity, sources and major groups of food toxins, toxicity testing methods and risk assessment.

This course is an introduction to global health from an interdisciplinary perspective. It will examine issues that affect population health the world over and policy recommendations to prevent emerging and re-emerging diseases.

This course is designed to give students a broad overview to pertinent topics in the field of global maternal and child health. Topics covered include causes of maternal and infant mortality, treatment of malaria in pregnancy, HIV and pregnancy, infant nutrition, maternal and child nutrition, gender roles, and cultural and religious concepts in relation to working in a global setting. This course will explore approaches to public health programming that acknowledge and incorporate cultural differences.

Implementing evidence-based public health requires us to examine evidence in order to make the best decisions we can to improve the health of communities and populations. Data science is a rapidly growing discipline which combines programming skills, statistical knowledge and applied subject expertise to examine data to answer questions and make informed decisions. In this course we will learn which kinds of questions to ask, how to visualize and model data to answer those questions, and how to communicate our findings.

Most of us can think of something risky, but what is risk? How is risk defined and quantified? And what do we do when an action, product or intervention has both risks and benefits? This course will dive into several topics in public health that are considered to have both risks and benefits including GMOs, water fluoridation, chemicals in sunscreen, and medical imaging techniques. Students will also have the opportunity to dig deeper into a topic of their choosing to explore how risks and benefits are balanced for individuals and populations.