Health economics provides theories and tools for understanding, predicting, and changing human behavior. Understanding and changing the behavior of firms and individuals, designing health policies, and managing firms and organizations concerned with delivering health care and improving health, requires a solid foundation in health economics. In this course, students will learn the concepts in health economics most relevant and important to public health professionals and how these economic concepts can be applied to improving health care and the public health systems. Students will identify the basic concepts of health economics for the purposes of solving problems using these concepts, and apply these concepts in new contexts within public health.
Why does the government play such a central role in the health of its citizens? What factors unique to American politics have given us the healthcare system we currently have, and how much change can be accomplished within our philosophical and ethical confines? How do political changes yield policy shifts - or not? This course analyzes the role of major institutions - the central government, the federal system, the private sector, interest groups, and so on - in formulating and implementing health policy in the United States. We will discuss underlying normative issues and crossnational perspectives on healthcare to situate American healthcare policy along a broader global political spectrum, and attempt to forecast what changes are likely - or unlikely - to occur. Topics will include political history, policy formation and recommendations, market forces and economic influences, and more.
This course is intended to give the student a broad understanding of the components of the health care system and the basic management principles of hospital organization and management. The course will employ a variety of learning formats for students including lectures by the instructors, guest lecturers with special expertise, case studies and student presentations. Emphasis will be on the historical trends of health care statistics and operating data of health care institutions; the history of hospitals and health care systems; their organization and finances; regulatory controls; management strategies; accreditation and professional standards; government; private insurance; administrative leadership and professional interactions, emergency services, healthcare trends and marketing.
The goal of this course is to give future health care workers and researchers a richer understanding of how their profession relates to the rest of society, and how art and popular entertainment has constructed, shaped, and sometimes distorted our shared social and cultural understanding of the field. The class will offer a whole new and different context to explore the issues students are studying in their other classes: from policy to management, from epidemiology to global health, even
economics. Among other things, we will humanize the data and theory students learn at Mailman. This leads to more complex and rigorous thinking. At its heart a class on communication, this course will consider healthcare, art, and the media in the
broadest sense. We will examine the ways society?s sometimes-troubled, but always fascinating healthcare systems has evolved with, and perhaps due to, its depictions by artists through the years. Using academic journal articles to provide context, we will consider sources as disparate as the Egyptian Book of the Dead; fiction by Denis Johnson, Virginia Wolf, Celine, Ernest Hemingway, and others; the poetry of Emily Dickenson, Lucie Brock-Broido, Henri Cole, and William Carlos
Williams; literary essays by Montaigne, George Orwell, Meehan Crist, Malcolm Gladwell; Movies by Vittorio Di Sica, and Michael Moore; and perhaps the weirdest musical ever made: a sci-fi, healthcare horror starring Anthony Stewart Head (Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Paris Hilton, Sarah Brightman and Paul Sorvino. We will take a look at some fantastic pieces of propaganda and commercials that can be viewed as activist art; and finally students will produce their own piece of healthcare-inspired creative work.
The current market places increasing demands on healthcare managers so it is essential that individuals possess basic skills related to financial management and financial reporting. Current events make these demands more dynamic than ever. This course is intended for students who are interested in expanding their knowledge of healthcare financial issues and/or pursuing careers that involve financial management in the healthcare sector. The focus will be on non-profit healthcare delivery organizations.
How is the health care system organized? Who pays the bill? Why have efforts to enact national health insurance failed? What role does government now play in the US health care system, and how do different levels of government share these tasks? Contrary to many perceptions, the fervent debate of these questions is not a recent phenomenon; these are issues that have been argued vigorously throughout American political history. Exploring these debates is critical both to the development of public health policy and the management of delivery systems.
This course focuses on policy and management issues that affect all health care practitioners. We will examine, among other topics, the historical foundations of the American health care system, the rise of managed care, the make-up of the healthcare workforce, the key issues on the nation’s long-term care policy agenda, and ways in which government can encourage good quality care. This introductory course is intended for MHA students and serves to fulfill a core course requirement in Health Policy and Management.
Analytics and Managerial Decision-Making I is the first of two required quantitative methods courses taken in sequence by all MHA students. These courses are foundational to the MHA curriculum. The two courses are fully integrated with respect to materials, exercises and cases, and by a two-term, team-based application project.
Managers are continually confronted with the need to make significant decisions concerning the organizational and financial performance of a health organization, based on a combination of strategic intention, practical experience, and interpretation and application of complex data and information. Data analysis is one tool that supports such decision-making. This course is designed to provide management students with the tools to generate and present data-driven and model-based management recommendations that are meaningful and implementable.
The course focuses on learning basic tools for the collection, analysis, and presentation of data in support of managerial/executive decision-making. Topics will include introductory data and statistical exploration from basic descriptive statistics to population and market estimation, comparison testing and decision-making, sampling design and analysis, and predicting/forecasting using linear regression. Using Excel as an additional tool, the course develops analytical skills to prepare managers to make and to present informed decisions in the overall healthcare sector.
Data is most useful when it can tell a story. Health analytics merges technologies and skills used to deliver business, clinical and programmatic insights into the complex components that drive medical outcomes, costs and oversight. By focusing on business intelligence and developing tools to evaluate clinical procedures, devices, and programs, organizations can use comparative and outcomes data to strengthen financial performance. This information can improve the way healthcare is evaluatedand delivered for better outcomes across the spectrum of health industries.
In this course, students will learn SAS as a tool to manipulate and analyze healthcare data and begin to understand what clinical and public health interventions work best for improving health, for example. Students will learn how to organize and analyze data to inform the practices of healthcare providers and policymakers to make evidence-based resource allocation decisions.Comparative & Effectiveness Outcomes Research (CEOR) certificate students will take this course inpreparation for the capstone class.SAS basics (e.g., creating SAS datasets and new variables, sorting, merging, reporting) and advanced statistics (e.g., using a logistical regression to create propensity scores for matched cohort analyses) will be covered.
Applications of behavioral insights are expanding rapidly across civic, medical, social, corporate, educational, and economic professions. This class covers the underlying theories for behavioral insights, using scientific and real-world examples of applications from multiple disciplines and locations. The course will also cover methods for behavioral implementation and evaluation, focusing particularly on healthcare policy perspectives. Students will learn a broad range of strategies through a highly interactive format, taught partially in a classroom setting in addition to remote asynchronous and synchronous sessions. Students will gain experience designing and developing their own evidence- based behavioral interventions as a part of a semester-long project.
The course is taught in three phases. The first phase will introduce fundamentals of behavioral science and evidence-based policy. Students will then spend the majority of the course on examples of behavioral insights such as nudges in practice, in a healthcare context and beyond. The course will end with sessions on practical applications, where students will learn to identify appropriate situations for behavioral interventions and produce a final project in a chosen context.
From 1970 until today, America’s prison and jail population has increased sevenfold, from some 300,000 to around 2.2 million adults and children behind bars. Accounting for less than 5 percent of the world’s inhabitants, but about 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated inhabitants, the United States is the most incarcerating society in human history. The U.S. federal and state governments imprison more people and at higher rates than do any other governments on the planet, and they do so today more than they did at any other period in American history.
This astounding amount of human confinement (commonly called “mass incarceration”) disproportionately impacts the polity’s poorest communities of color—especially young Black males—which suffer from chronic conditions and infectious disease; face higher mortality rates; and experience, because of criminal records, less opportunity to secure gainful employment, stable housing, access to safety net programs, and education. Female incarceration over the past few decades has grown at twice the rate of male incarceration, and black women, specifically, are twice as likely as white women to serve time. Imprisonment exposes people to a wide range of circumstances proving detrimental to long-term physical and mental health, like inadequate sanitation, poor ventilation, and solitary confinement. And most formerly incarcerated people return to their communities with deep wounds and new traumas resulting from incarcerated life and from isolation through long separations from families and social supports.
This course sits at the intersection of public health, policy, and law. The course will explore the full spectrum of causes and costs of mass incarceration as a public health crisis. This course will examine how exposures to different structures of the American criminal punishment apparatus (e.g., law enforcement, jail, prison, or detention centers, community supervision) shape the health of people, families, and society. Observing mass incarceration as an epidemic, this course will adopt a useful public-health model of prevention to contemplate a concerted approach consisting of primary, secondary, and tertiary strategies for unwinding mass human imprisonment while advancing enhanced public health for the nation’s most disempowered members. This course will pay special attention to acutely at-risk populations, including detained youth and youth of incarcerated adults, pregnant incarcerated people, and the elderly. And the role that
The Course introduces students to the fundamentals of case competitions and prepares them to compete in select case competitions over the course of the year. Case competitions afford students the opportunity to apply classroom learning to dynamic health care organizational and industry problems. The Course covers topics ranging from the framework for breaking down cases to common analytical techniques and presentation skills. We will build the foundational skills for students to prepare and deliver comprehensive, professional analyses in competitive settings.
This course will introduce the theory and frameworks that ground advocacy and community organizing with the aim of enabling such practices within public health and beyond. Students will deepen their understanding of the strategies behind effective advocacy, capacity building, and organizing, both in the field and within institutions. In learning history, power structures, power relations, and pre-existing models, students will learn not only about changemaking but how to affect systemic change themselves. They will learn frameworks to understand social problems and alter power relations including theory of change, relational power building, and power mapping. By examining epidemics, social movements, community health, institutional failures, and public policy, this course will provide students the ability to understand the “why” and the “how” of becoming an advocate and organizer.
The Course expands on the original case competition fundamentals course, offering students opportunities to mentor, teach and hone their analytical and case writing skills. Case competitions afford students the opportunity to apply classroom learning to dynamic health care organizational and industry problems. Students in their second year of the course will be asked to teach sections of the class and to research and write their own healthcare business case.
We are currently living in a climate of apathy, collective outrage, growing distrust in public institutions, and an onslaught of dangerous dis- and misinformation, especially about science. For those of us in public health these are challenging times. How can we write about pressing issues—race, disease, poverty, women’s rights, depression, homeless—and reach an audience that is contentious or refuses to listen? How can get these same people to care? In this class, we delve into the art of storytelling through reading human centered non-fiction and essays that focus on/speak to different public health issues. We will look closely at each genre, reading with an eye toward examining its goal, the narrative structure, main character, and issue at hand. Taking what we’ve learned we will apply these techniques to our own writing, developing the storytelling skills necessary to effectively communicate and “win over” the general public, and hopefully inspire and persuade readers to listen and act.
Popular media routinely tout imminent breakthroughs that often fizzle. In this course, we examine advances that indisputably changed medical practice in the last quarter of the 20th century through case histories. The case histories suggest that protracted,
multiplayer
innovations – not solitary breakthroughs – produce transformational results. Yet venturesome individuals who do not follow the crowd remain crucial. Engaging stories make the vast number of facts presented in the case histories memorable. But the course treats learning new facts mainly as a valuable byproduct. Rather, we rely on the case histories in two more subtle ways, namely: (1) developing skills and judgment and (2) sharpening goals and aspirations.
Large data sets provide crucial information for monitoring the health of our nation and evaluating public health policies. The principal goal of this course is for students to develop the skills to identify, process, and analyze these data to answer a specific research or policy question. The class is an applied, hands-on course that provides an introduction to several major health data sets and guides students in processing and analyzing these data. Students will hone computer and statistical skills developed in other research methods courses. Students with also gain insight into active research projects that utilize large scale health data sets via a series of guest lectures. By accessing data that measure health variables of current importance, the class provides a foundation for developing a variety of health policy research questions.
This course examines the movement to health care quality in the US, providing students with definitions of quality and a historical perspective on quality initiatives. Primary focus of the class is on quality initiatives in the past 10 years, including efforts by the Institute of Medicine, Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, various accrediting organizations (e.g. NCQA), and employer-based initiatives such as HEDIS and Leapfrog. There will be in depth analysis of establishing and measuring the quality of health care in various organizational settings, on risk management and legal issues, and on recent efforts to link quality with pay for performance.
The current systems for the delivery of health services in the United States often fall short of addressing the health needs of many people living in the communities they cover and in so doing contribute to health status disparities. The objective of this course is to help students develop a framework to understand the needs of traditionally under-served populations and the challenges facing the delivery systems that handle these groups. This course has two major foci. The first is understanding who the “vulnerable” populations are as it relates to access to needed health services and disparities in health status. The interaction between health care systems and health care disparities will be explored. Particular attention will be paid to issues surrounding poverty, literacy, immigrant health care and several vulnerable sub-populations including gay-lesbian, homeless and prison. The second focus is service delivery for individuals traditionally under-served. This component includes an examination of organizations and provider (particularly physician)-patient relationships. Students will have the opportunity to move from the classroom to the street, observing, first-hand, several hospital and community-based arrangements.
This course is intended to provide students with the legal framework governing health care administration, management and policy. Students will analyze case law, and selected statutes relevant to health care administrators, providers, and consumers of care. Students will be exposed to the evolution of laws and the ethical, practical and political impact of laws in the management of health care institutions.
An examination of the complex and evolving healthcare and insurance system from the perspective of managed health care and insurance companies, hospital systems, IPAs, physicians, employers, patients, and pharma companies. This course will focus on the interplay among these key stakeholders. There will be four guest speakers from the healthcare industry who will help the students apply their readings and discussions to real challenges.
This course will take an in depth look at hospital finances using data from the New York area. Students will develop technical skills, learn hospital operations, and be asked to examine how structures created to optimize finance affects access to services for disparate patients across varying services.
Students will develop technical skills by creating their own excel models. Assignments will include budget and staffing models; financial plan projections; and cash-flow forecasts.
Students will also be asked to participate in a course long group research project that evaluates the nexus between healthcare reimbursement policy and access to services.
Managing professionals is crucial to the success (or failure) of health care organizations because the provision of services primarily relies on human decision-making and interaction. Health care professionals determine the level of quality as well as the costs associated with health care services directly or indirectly. The goal of this course is to introduce students to the functions and issues associated with managing human resources in health care organizations through in class exercises and outside of class assignment that demonstrate the human resource challenges that graduates may face as health care executives in the future. Significant attention is given to: 1) workforce issues, 2) understanding legal issues related to the employment setting, 3) selection and retention of employees, 4) establishing performance standards and evaluating performance, and compensation, and 5) understanding the use and effects of monetary and non-monetary incentives in human resources management in the United States and globally.
Resolving seemingly intractable policy issues depends on harnessing an array of strategies used by political actors. These strategies may include reframing an issue or bringing new evidence to light that stimulates new coalitions, persuading legislators that supporting a controversial measure is actually beneficial for their political career, or getting the media excited about an important, but very dry, technical policy issue. Another strategy is to change the venue in which the policy debate takes place – perhaps for example, by filing a lawsuit in state or federal courts, or bringing legislation before city government or state legislatures. As this course shows, the venue in which policy debates take place will structure the kinds of debates that are likely to occur.
This course will provide an overview of the history of mental health policy in the United States, the nature of mental illness and effective intervention, and the elements of mental health policy. We will discuss the components of the mental health service system, mental health finance, the process of policy making, population-based mental health policies, and mental health in health policy reform. Students are expected to be able to understand the range of mental health illnesses/populations, to explain the concerns about quality, access, and cost of mental health services as well as the workings of policy mechanisms such as financing as they are applied to mental health. They are also expected to understand mental health policy considerations in current health care reform debates.
This course examines one of the most significant but relatively recent developments in the healthcare market place: the trend toward increased consolidation of healthcare providers into larger practices and into vertically integrated delivery systems, as well as the parallel trend toward consolidation of health insurance companies into fewer, but much larger entities. It will draw upon economic theory, empirical research, and health policy and economic analysis to explore the implications of these developments, coupled with other emerging trends, on healthcare market competition, prices, profits, expenditures, and consumer welfare
In this course we explore constitutional law through the lens of public health policy. We examine the relationships and tensions between individual and collective concerns. We evaluate public health issues from an American legal perspective to determine the constitutional soundness of the health promotion objective. In this course we consider multi-disciplinary factors and how they interact with issues of federalism, morality, economics and the politics of science. Readings include case law and related legal materials, in addition to writings by public health practitioners, historians, sociologists, economists and philosophers. Core topics include, among others, constitutional law and major constitutional cases relating to public health, economic analysis in law, tort litigation in public health, historical public health law perspectives, health promotion campaigns, property regulation, privacy protection, various case studies including immunization, civil commitment, infectious disease, tobacco policy and abortion law. Guest speakers provide additional current perspectives from practitioners.
Strategic Planning for Health Insurance Plans is designed to provide students with a broad and deep understanding of safety-net health insurance plan operations and management. Students will have the opportunity to manage plan finances, set benefit designs, and establish actuarially sound premiums, all while operating within the constraints of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In a very abbreviated period of time, student will be completely immersed in real-world situations where they will be forced to make appropriate decisions which will either sustain or submerge the health plan. In addition to expanding their knowledge base about the health insurance industry, students will enhance their competency develop in a number of areas including analytical thinking, strategic orientation, collaboration, and communication. The 21 hours of course work will contain a blend of lectures, class work and a group project. Students will be evaluated on class participation (20%), learning reviews (quizzes (30%), and a group project (50%).
This course has two overall goals. The first is to increase your effectiveness in understanding and managing individuals and teams in health care organizations. The course’s second goal is to prepare you to effectively design organizations. Effective managers not only must lead individuals and teams: they also must ensure that their organizations are well-designed to deliver the results that their strategies promise. This entails developing knowledge and skills to analyze key issues in organizational structure, power and politics, culture, and change.
The course combines conceptual and experiential approaches. We draw on several sources of knowledge to accomplish course objectives: (1) conceptual frameworks and research findings from the social sciences; (2) case studies; (3) roles plays, videos and exercises; and (4) your own work and personal experiences. The class will be highly interactive, and active participation in discussions is expected.
The course selectively surveys ideas and frameworks from the social sciences and explores their implications for leadership and managerial practice.
Over the semester, the course considers questions of Mission and Vision (What areas, activities, or business(es) should we be in?") and questions of Strategy and Operations ("How can we perform or compete effectively in this area?"). It covers both strategy formulation ("What should our strategy be?") as well as strategy implementation ("What do we need to do to make this strategy work?"). The course also addresses several additional issues that are critical to the strategic management "process" (e.g.. designing planning systems, managing contention). The course emphasizes the multiple, related requirements of the leader/manager's job: analysis, creativity, and action.
Students apply advanced strategic frameworks and concepts to real-world, complex, strategic problems involving multiple healthcare sectors, institutions, players and/or disciplines/functions. Specific objectives include: the ability to conceptualize and model a complex, multi-faceted, multi-player healthcare strategic challenge in simple language and in a coherent framework that supports analyses and resolution; a deepened understanding of the inherent complexity and interdependency of the major challenges--economic, political, strategic, and operational--facing the healthcare industry and specific sectors, institutions, and players within the industry; the ability to apply strategic analysis and other curricular concepts and tools and field work experience to complex healthcare industry/management problems; the ability to think critically about issues, perspectives, and potential strategic options, using sophisticated analytical and problem-solving tools and informed judgement to formulate recommendations for presentation to senior healthcare executives and policy-makers; : the ability to formulate a set of strategic options--addressing the multiple health industry players and interconnected challenges--for consideration;
the ability to critique a number of strategic options available to a health industry/healthcare executive team (or multiple, interconnected teams) and conclude which sets of options may be optimal given internal institutional competences and external political, policy, and economic realities
Students apply advanced strategic frameworks and concepts to real-world, complex, strategic problems involving multiple healthcare sectors, institutions, players and/or disciplines/functions. Specific objectives include: the ability to conceptualize and model a complex, multi-faceted, multi-player healthcare strategic challenge in simple language and in a coherent framework that supports analyses and resolution; a deepened understanding of the inherent complexity and interdependency of the major challenges--economic, political, strategic, and operational--facing the healthcare industry and specific sectors, institutions, and players within the industry; the ability to apply strategic analysis and other curricular concepts and tools and field work experience to complex healthcare industry/management problems; the ability to think critically about issues, perspectives, and potential strategic options, using sophisticated analytical and problem-solving tools and informed judgement to formulate recommendations for presentation to senior healthcare executives and policy-makers; : the ability to formulate a set of strategic options--addressing the multiple health industry players and interconnected challenges--for consideration;
the ability to critique a number of strategic options available to a health industry/healthcare executive team (or multiple, interconnected teams) and conclude which sets of options may be optimal given internal institutional competences and external political, policy, and economic realities
Directing a public health non-profit requires knowledge of a variety of diverse content as well as organizational skills. This class will focus on leadership, facilitating change, human resources, strategic planning, grantwriting/fund-raising and assessing program effectiveness that public health professionals working as managers encounter on a regular basis. Students will have the opportunity to develop strategies for responding to daily management situations. The goal of the class will be to provide students an experience that will directly translate to working in public health organizations.
In recent years, entrepreneurship has gained enormous popularity, even becoming accepted as a means to address pressing social and environmental issues. A significant percentage of our economy is now based on small businesses, and an entrepreneurial career is more likely and possible than ever before. Even in a more traditional corporate career, entrepreneurial skills can serve a manager well as companies that see out new opportunities. The benefits of entrepreneurship are abundant: the creativity to grow and manager your own business, the freedom of time, the potential to accumulate significant wealth and the possibility of making the world a better place. How does it happen? How can we take an idea and a blank piece of paper and transform them into an operating business with customers, cash flow and profits?
This course will break the process into discernible steps and skills. It will teach skills in opportunity identification and evaluation as well as an understanding of the steps and competencies required to launch a new business. The focus will be on scalable businesses that are large enough to attract professional investors.
The Pivot_Professional Development is required for full-time MHA and MPH degrees in the Health Policy & Management (HPM) department. It is one component of the Professional Development Program (PDP), a comprehensive, co-curricular effort aimed at developing personal and professional skills to prepare students to enter the workforce successfully and to begin to develop necessary skills to be successful in their careers. The course will meet over three semesters for a total of 1.5 credits. Semester one will focus on self-discovery and personal branding, semester two will hone in on building skills to get your practicum and succeed in your practicum, and the third semester will largely focus on the full-time job search and the first 90 days on the job. Pivot will be complemented by Practicum Day, mock interviers, data software workshops and Career Service seminars.
The two main goals of this course are to develop skills needed to shape your professional self and develop the skills to find and thrive in a job. This course will help you achieve these goals by providing the tools to: (1) develop a professional persona (2) sharpen professional communication (3) collaborate effectively as a team member and (4) clarify career objectives.
The Pivot_Professional Development is required for full-time MHA and MPH degrees in the Health Policy & Management (HPM) department. It is one component of the Professional Development Program (PDP), a comprehensive, co-curricular effort aimed at developing personal and professional skills to prepare students to enter the workforce successfully and to begin to develop necessary skills to be successful in their careers. The course will meet over three semesters for a total of 1.5 credits. Semester one will focus on self-discovery and personal branding, semester two will hone in on building skills to get your practicum and succeed in your practicum, and the third semester will largely focus on the full-time job search and the first 90 days on the job. Pivot will be complemented by Practicum Day, mock interviers, data software workshops and Career Service seminars.
The two main goals of this course are to develop skills needed to shape your professional self and develop the skills to find and thrive in a job. This course will help you achieve these goals by providing the tools to: (1) develop a professional persona (2) sharpen professional communication (3) collaborate effectively as a team member and (4) clarify career objectives.
“Money, Politics & Law: Public Health and Abortion Policy” is a deep dive into health policy, health care finance, federalism, and regulatory and enforcement protocols through the unique lens of abortion. Public funding limitations, private insurance coverage restrictions and provider supply constraints are perpetually debated in health policy but remain critical leverage points influencing abortion care. With access alternately protected and eroded by courts, legislatures and regulators nationwide, abortion remains the single most controversial health care service in the United States. Although generally safe when performed legally and cost-effective relative to pregnancies carried to term, the future of abortion appears uncertain. Using abortion as a case study, students conduct a multi-disciplinary examination of legislative, executive and judicial branches of government in action.
In each of seven sessions, students will scrutinize facets health law and policy- from landscape view to microscopic dissection- to understand how abortion both mimics and is marginalized relative to other health care services. The course begins by exploring patterns of payment for abortion, selected abortion jurisprudence, federal statutes, key state laws and the regulatory frameworks affecting funding for abortion. How much does abortion cost? Who pays for it and how? Students focus on public financing limitations including the Hyde Amendment, Harris v. McRae and its state level progeny; private insurance coverage and coverage bans including the Affordable Care Act and implementing regulations; noninsurance based funding mechanisms for abortion services including out-of-pocket contributions, borrowed money, sliding scale negotiations, structured funds and philanthropy. Complex issues influencing the abortion provider supply including medical malpractice insurance, laws governing provision of care by non-physicians, and provider training pipelines are explored. This cutting edge health policy case study concludes by contextualizing US abortion policies among developed nations and examining abortion-related restrictions on US foreign funding.
This course provides an advanced, critical analysis of the delivery and payment of healthcare services in the U.S. with a specific focus on actions innovative healthcare providers and health insurers are
taking to improve the quality of patient care, manage the escalating costs of providing such care, and enhance business performance. It will analyze the attractiveness and feasibility of new approaches to address the challenges facing providers, payers and patients operating in an inefficient, misaligned, and fragmented healthcare system. Particular focus will be given to the impact of the 2009 HITECH Act as well as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010. There will be guest lectures by a variety of major leaders in healthcare business and policy. The course will be useful for students interested in careers in health system management, health insurance, HCIT, healthcare consulting & banking, private equity, investment management, health policy, entrepreneurship in the healthcare services sector and pharmaceuticals, medical devices & diagnostics.
This course will explore the complex and evolving relationship between food, public health and social justice. It will provide a context to understand the historical, behavioral, cultural and environmental impacts on access to food, and its integration with population health and the health system. Students will make connections between the food system, public health, and the development and implementation of health policy. Students will translate course material into a practical exercise by designing and implementing a community food and public health project. Food intersects with public health on many more issues than most people imagine.
For students who wish to acquire further knowledge and research skills in areas of special interest. Tailored to the particular needs and interests of individual students, they can take many forms - literature reviews, research projects, field experiences, other special studies, or learning experiences. The objective is to enrich the students program.
This course consists of two components: a computer science component and a health policy-specific component. The first component consists of lectures, homework assignments, and in-class quizzes in the Department of Computer Science, which introduce students to algorithmic problem solving and implementing solutions in Python. These lectures will include students enrolled in context sections from other parts of the University, and assume no prior experience with programming whatsoever. They will be supplemented by a weekly lab at CUMC for Mailman students, which will focus on guiding students through practical examples/applications of the methods presented in the lectures. The second component of the class is context-specific, and includes a health policy analysis project, in which students apply programming methods learned in class to a health policy problem, as well as context lectures given at CUMC in the second half of the semester. These context lectures will focus on the ever-expanding role of computing and “big data” in health policy and healthcare, and will discuss recent research on these topics. Attendance for all lectures and labs is mandatory.
With the Middle East and other regions of the world in political turmoil, and with the frequent occurrence of natural disasters and deadly epidemics, the demands on and the stakes involved with humanitarian aid in health grow steadily higher. Yet both historical and recent political and scientific controversies abound regarding how it should be planned and delivered. In this course, students will explore some of the most salient of these controversies and review concrete cases of intervention from Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East, Europe and former Soviet Union. The twin objectives of the course are to provide students with: 1) a rigorous understanding of current policies and approaches to humanitarian aid in health, and 2) the analytical tools and historical perspective to participate, as public health professionals, in the field’s renewal. The course will be provided through a mix of lectures, discussion and debates. Major international UN and NGO practitioners will be invited to participate in the debates and a United Nations Headquarters tailored site visit will be organized.