The SMS Master’s Capstone course is required for all students in the Master of Science (MS), Accelerated Master of Public Health (MPH), and 4+1 MPH programs of the Department of Sociomedical Sciences (SMS). For MS students, the culminating high-quality written manuscript of this course involves original research or program evaluation based either on primary data collected by the student or secondary analysis of available data. For Accelerated and 4+1 MPH students, the culminating high-quality written manuscript of this course involves comprehensive review of the literature. The student’s work must focus within the field of sociomedical sciences and demonstrate integration of the coursework and training from the master’s program. Based on each student’s methods and areas of study, they will be matched with a faculty sponsor who will provide supervision and mentoring throughout the course.
This Global Immersion course provides students with knowledge, insights, and experiences with respect to Israel’s innovation ecosystem. What is the “secret sauce” that propelled Israel to its present leadership position, a global innovation and entrepreneurship hub often referred to as “startup nation,” that hails the highest concentration of startups and unicorns per capita? The course's in-class meetings and its one week visit to Israel will provide background and hands on exposure to some of the key drivers, including leadership, politics, economics, geography, and culture. Students will gain an understanding of Israel's unique circumstances and achievements through a combination of academic learnings, guest speakers, business and government leaders that will share first hand experiences and perspectives, and on-the-ground exposure to Israeli businesses, cultural and historical sites. This Global Immersion course begins with six 1.5-hour sessions, followed by a one-week study trip to Israel. The course's pedagogy combines current examples, presentations, guest visits by leaders from business and government. Travel to Israel is planned for March 14-21, 2026. The 2025-2026 Global Immersion Program fee for all classes is $2100 and provides students with double occupancy lodging, ground transportation and some meals; unless an increased fee is otherwise specified in the course description. It does not cover roundtrip international airfare. Attendance both in New York and in country and regular participation are a crucial part of the learning experience and as such attendance is mandatory. Unexcused absences are highly frowned upon and will have negative consequences on class grade, and students who have expected conflicts should not apply for this course. Students who miss the first class meeting may be removed from the course. No program fee refunds will be given after the add/drop period has closed. Please visit the Chazen Institute website to learn more about the Global Immersion Program, and visit the Global Immersion Policies page to review policies affecting these courses. The ongoing conflict in the region over the past two years has fortunately culminated in a recent cease fire, of which the US was instrumental in brokering and enforcing. Nevertheless, it is possible that if the security situation deteriorates, we will have to cancel and offer an alternative travel plan. At present, Columbia's travel insurance provider categorizes Israel and th
In recent years, the global public health field has begun to move away from a focus on individual behavior change to one that focuses on “structural and environmental approaches” for health research and intervention. But what are “structural and environmental approaches,” and why the shift? Understanding the definitions, history and evolution of such approaches is important for global public health researchers and practitioners, providing a new way of thinking about improving the health of people locally and globally, in addition to exploring how structural and environmental interventions can be effectively evaluated. The purpose of this course is to provide students with an introduction to the concept of structural and environmental approaches, an understanding of why such approaches are essential for the future of an effective global health agenda, and a historical overview of the transition in the field from a focus on individual behavior change, to a focus on cultural context, and finally to one of social structural approaches. The class will also include a life course framework into structural approaches for global health and perspectives on the digital environment. This course fits into the MPH curriculum in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences by increasing students’ knowledge and skills of key perspectives and approaches to health research and intervention that incorporate social science theories into global public health interventions.
We will use the tools of behavioral economics and psychology to better understand consumer financial decisions and the consumer finance industry. We will examine markets for borrowing (mortgages, credit cards, peer-to-peer lending, payday loans), saving (401(k)s, strategies to promote saving, optimal asset allocation), and insurance (including life, health, and longevity). We will emphasize both how people do and how people should make financial decisions, and the implications for financial services firms. The goal of the course is to not only understand consumer finance, but to emphasize how the lessons from psychology and economics can be used to improve business decisions, foster innovation, and enhance public policy.
Disparities in health and illness related to social and economic inequality in the U.S. Theoretical and empirical research on factors linked to class, gender, racial and ethnic differences that have been hypothesized to explain the generally poorer health and higher rates of mortality among members of socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. Concepts, theories and empirical evidence will be examined to expand our understanding of the impact of structural factors on health behavior, lifestyles and outcomes.
To prevent and control the spread of disease, public health professionals choose from a continuum of possible approaches ranging from persuasive to coercive. At one end of the spectrum, public health seeks to induce voluntary actions or behaviors by appealing to reason and providing information and education. At the other end, it forces people to take actions or refrain from taking actions through the use of laws and regulations. In the middle lies an ethically ambiguous gray area of manipulation, psychological and emotional pressure, incentives, and “nudges.” The difficulty of choosing among these approaches was dramatically apparent during the COVID pandemic. The polarizing debates over issues such as mask mandates and recommendations, travel restrictions, school and business closings, and vaccine mandates illustrated the challenges of using both coercive and persuasive approaches.
This course will explore the uses of coercion and persuasion in public health from the standpoints of ethics, policy, and law. We will analyze a broad range of public health practices ranging from less to more forceful. We will address questions such as: When, if ever, is coercion ethically justified? What principles should guide its application? How should social factors such as race, class, and gender influence our evaluation of coercive measures? What alternatives to coercion are available for achieving a given health outcome? What ethical problems may persuasive public health measures raise? In addition to seminar-style discussion, students will participate in a variety of in-class group activities and exercises that will enable them to critically engage with the course materials.
Public health policy is always the product of controversy. Most typically such conflicts are played out in terms of a clash among scientific considerations. But even when not explicit, the controversies entail political tensions and ethical concerns. In this course we will examine the political and ethical dimensions of public health policy, focusing on issues of justice and liberty. Four domains of public health will be examined: the prevention of diseases associated with personal behavior, protection against occupational hazard, epidemic control, and access to health care.
Students will write one short paper based on the readings in Part I and a final term paper of 20-25 pages based on a subject of your own choosing and a conference with Professor Bayer. This course will provide students with an opportunity to examine the underlying ethical tensions in public health. Students will be able to identify the conflicting values at stake and will have the opportunity to learn about how ethical debates unfold and are (sometimes) resolved.
Critical reading, lectures, in class analysis and debate and a final paper will be used by students to achieve the above learning objectives (competencies).
This course provides the opportunity to manage the symptoms of cancer and its treatments with expert supervision and collaboration in the clinical setting. Learning is facilitated by expert clinicians in oncology/hospice/home/long term care areas. Evidence based practice will be promoted in issues related to quality of life, identification and prevention of complications of treatment and patient and caregiver stress.
This seminar examines the political development, foreign policy, and historical trajectory of modern Ukraine, with particular attention to its evolving relationship with Russia and the West. The course is divided into three sections: (1) historical foundations of Ukrainian statehood; (2) thematic issues such as nationalism, governance, and Euroatlantic integration; and (3) the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. Students will explore the origins, progression, and implications of the war, while considering potential paths toward resolution.
Our objective is to look at a public health approach to chronic diseases in which prevention rather than treatment is emphasized. Although chronic diseases are numerous, our focus will be on those that are strongly correlated with obesity and for which the creation of opportunities for physical activity are important elements of our prevention agenda. Obesity has replaced smoking as the number one avoidable risk factor for mortality in the United States, and given the increased availability of funding for public health interventions in this domain, focusing our attention on the set of issues is an idea whose time has come. Often, prevention approaches in public health focus on the individual and on changing individual risk behaviors. In this course, by contrast, we will focus heavily on social and environmental factors that affect the choices individuals make about exercise, diet, and taking advantage of preventive services that promote health and prevent disease. Questions are intended to demonstrate that our success in promoting health behaviors will depend in large measure on the social and physical environment of the community. Moreover, interventions to reduce the risk of chronic disease have to consider the social resources that are available - or that can be created - in each setting where health promotion programs and policies are to be implemented. At the core of our efforts this semester, therefore, we will be examining the relationship between individuals, their health seeking and/or risk taking behaviors, and the manner in which their social and physical environment function as part of the problem or as the potential source of a solution.
This half semester course provides students with the opportunity to perform due diligence on early-stage social ventures
(nonprofit and for-profit ventures with a social or environmental mission). This course is designed for MBA students
interested in impact investing, social entrepreneurship, or philanthropy. The objective of the course is for students to
learn both the theory of investing in early-stage social ventures and the practice of evaluating early-stage social ventures
through a due diligence process. This course is not designed for the evaluation of larger, well-established social
enterprises.
Students are placed in teams to evaluate social entrepreneurs from the Columbia University community who have applied
for funding from the Tamer Fund for Social Ventures. The course is a combination of in-class lectures and discussion, and
practical application of class lessons outside of the classroom. Major topics covered include: the due diligence process,
assessing venture pitches and teams, due diligence in emerging markets, due diligence of non-profits, impact
measurement and management, and valuations and deal structure.
During the course, each student team completes detailed due diligence on their assigned social venture, including
diligence on applicants, the social venture and the sector. The course concludes with student teams submitting a written
due diligence report and a recommendation for funding to the Investment Board of the Tamer Fund for Social Ventures.
Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) has received growing attention over the past several decades as international, domestic, funding agencies and researchers have renewed a focus on an approach to health that recognizes the importance of social, political and economic systems to health behaviors and outcomes. The long-standing importance of this approach is reflected in the 1988 Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) landmark report The Future of Public Health and many other publications. The report indicates that communities and community-based organizations are one of six potential partners in the public health system and that building community-based partnerships is a priority area for improving public health. CBPR is not a method but an approach to research and practice that involves the active collaboration of the potential beneficiaries and recognizes and values the contributions that communities and their leaders can make to new knowledge and to the translation of research findings into public health practice and policy. CBPR - as it is often referred - is a collaborative approach to research that recognizes the value of equitably involving the intended beneficiaries throughout all phases of research and program planning, implementation, and evaluation. CBPR is also an important approach to advance health and social equity and is essentially a way to promote and operationalize health and social equity in research settings. This course will provide an examination of the relevant literature in CBPR with a focus on the history, theoretical framework and application of CBPR within public health programs and research, with special emphasis on the role of CBPR in advancing health and social equity.
Behavioral and environmental factors are major determinants of today's most pressing health issues. Community-level behavior change and health promotion interventions are promising strategies to address these issues on a large scale. This course will provide an overview of program planning, implementation, and evaluation – essential public health services and fundamental competencies for professionals working in the field of public health. Although the PRECEDE-PROCEED model will be used as the framework for the course structure and individual assignments, other planning models will also be presented and discussed. By the end of the course, students will develop a deep understanding of the complex processes involved in organizing public health programs, and learn the skills necessary to create a program and evaluation plan in a local community.
The Philippines is Asia’s rising tiger. It is among the world’s fastest-growing economies with average annual growth of 6 to 7% per year. After a dip in GDP growth during 2020 due to Covid, the economic growth rebounded to 7.6% during 2022. Average annual GDP per person has risen dramatically over the past two decades, from below US$ 1,000 per person in 2000 to US$ 3,500 by 2022. Philippines is on track to become one-trillion dollar economy by 2033. The central bank, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, is well managed and follows a sound monetary policy. The long-term prospect for the country is contingent upon improvement in governance, reducing income inequality, tackling corruption and a better regulatory environment. After losing its way for the past few decades, Philippines seems to be on the right path. We will develop a strong foundation in understanding Philippines’ history, economy, industry and competitive position, before we visit the country. The Global Immersion Program is structured to create this depth through readings and classroom discussion. This course will travel to the Philippines March 14-21, 2026 to Manila, Philippines’ business hub and an island that is yet to be confirmed. The 2025-2026 Global Immersion Program mandatory fee for all classes is $2100 and provides students with double occupancy lodging, ground transportation and some meals. It does not cover roundtrip international airfare into Manila and out of the second location. Attendance both in New York and in-country and regular participation are a crucial part of the learning experience and as such attendance is mandatory. Students who miss the first class meeting may be removed from the course. Please note all international travel involves risk. We do not control the cities and companies we visit. We try our best to plan a safe trip with positive experience. However, if your tolerance for risk or uncertainties is low, GIP is not for you. No program fee refunds will be given after the add/drop period has closed. Please visit the Chazen Institute website to learn more about the Global Immersion Program, and visit the Global Immersion Policies page to review policies affecting these courses.
Survey research is increasingly important for studying structural and social determinants of health, patient-centered care, or to address other evidence needs where first-hand information from individuals themselves are needed—often required—data sources. The course introduces students to principles for designing, conducting, and evaluating survey research that are standard practices in the field. Students who complete the course will learn how to develop and implement a survey, create and evaluate measures, and write up methods and results. Throughout the course, emphasis will be placed on applying survey research methods to answer research questions within public health. Students will develop a survey-based project based on their own research interests.
Global Immersion: South Africa’s Ongoing Transformation MBA SP2026 B8778 – 3 Credits – Prof. Brett House Course Description – Word Limit version (332 words) South Africa has transformed itself into an economic and political power, with membership in the G20 and BRICS, and a dynamic business ecosystem. This forward-looking course will consider the opportunities created by South Africa’s multiple identities, the implications of its particular history, its current challenges, and its position between advanced and emerging markets. Students will develop an intimate understanding of South Africa’s commercial environment and extract insights on creating impact in a range of economic landscapes. The course will delve into South Africa’s ongoing post-apartheid transition, the role of natural resources in South Africa, developments in the country’s new-economy sectors, prospects for innovation and entrepreneurship, and the possibilities created by integration with the African continent. The class will travel to Johannesburg and Cape Town during March 14–21, 2026; the first mandatory in-country meeting will be dinner on March 14 in Jo’burg. The 2025–26 Global Immersion Program mandatory fee for all courses is $2,100 and provides students with double occupancy lodging, ground transportation, and some meals; roundtrip international airfare is not covered. Attendance in New York and in-country, as well as regular participation, are crucial parts of the learning experience; hence, full attendance is mandatory. Students who miss the first in-class meeting may be removed from the course. No program fee refunds will be given after the add/drop period has closed. Please consult the Chazen Institute website to learn more about the Global Immersion Program (GIP). Note that all international travel involves some risks and uncertainties as we do not control the sites that we visit. We draw on our expertise and experience to make every reasonable effort to create a positive and safe learning environment in New York and in-country. The primacy of our safety objective may at times require changes to or deviations from pre-announced programming. If your tolerance for risk or uncertainties is low, the GIP is not the right choice for you.
Learning Objectives: (1) To understand and experience the process of investing in early stage startups and how that differs between the US and Japan (a) Sourcing deals from the startup ecosystem (b) Conducting diligence (c) Valuing startups (d) Negotiating term sheets (financial and governance terms) (e) Managing a portfolio post investment (2) To understand the investing landscape: players and resources (3) To understand the structural differences between venture capital and angel investing. This course covers many of the same topics as Foundations of VC and therefore students will not be able to take them both for credit. The course will travel during spring break March 14-21, 2026 to Tokyo, Japan. Global Immersion Program classes bridge classroom lessons and business practices in another country. These three credit classes meet for half a term in New York prior to a one week visit to the country of focus where students will meet with business executives and government officials while working on team projects. Upon return from the travel portion of the class, students may have one wrap up meeting at Columbia Business School. The 2025-2026 Global Immersion Program fee for all classes is $2100 and provides students with double occupancy lodging, ground transportation and some meals; unless an increased fee is otherwise specified in the course description. It does not cover roundtrip international airfare. Attendance both in New York and in country and regular participation are a crucial part of the learning experience and as such attendance is mandatory. Students who miss the first class meeting may be removed from the course. No program fee refunds will be given after the add/drop period has closed. Please visit the Chazen Institute website to learn more about the Global Immersion Program, and visit the Global Immersion Policies page to review policies affecting these courses.
Business School offers important windows into the functions of business and into ways of conceptualizing challenges and opportunities. It also offers valuable cross-cutting tools for analysis, decisions, and leadership. But there’s more…: Very successful and admired business leaders think even more fundamentally and broadly about the economic, political, and social context of business decision making. They understand that the ‘corporation’ is a legal and social construct, not just an economic construct. Support for business corporations has not been and is not absolute and requires business leaders to examine the role of their business and business generally in the broader society — business and society. In contemporary language, what is the ‘purpose’ of business? For whom should the corporation be run? Answers to these questions and others shape business, business careers, and attitudes toward business.
Addressing such cross-cutting questions requires that we examine the business corporation and its role in society through multiple perspectives. In particular, we will study business and society through the lenses of the evolving business organization,
finance and investors, employees, corporate governance, privacy and big data, social movements, social justice, and climate change. To accomplish these views, we will draw on leading CBS faculty and their ideas. In each case, we will complement these ideas with the
experience of leading business practitioners as teaching partners. The introductory and closing sessions will feature longer conversations with a business leader on the role of business in society. Conducting the course in this way brings both ‘business and society’
and Columbia Business School’s ‘ideas, talent, and network’ to center stage.
You will also be co-creating this course with the teaching team. Your presence, preparation, and participation are vital to a successful class experience. The syllabus presents questions and readings to get you ready for our class discussion and analysis.
All of us on the teaching team look forward to working with you!
Among the more durable axioms of public health is this: context matters. For ethnography, this is not only an article of faith, but its raison d’etre: ethnography was invented to take context’s measure in order to understand what we’re observing. For our purposes, ethnography refers to both a method – that recursive process of participating, observing, writing/recording and reflecting, in (usually) unfamiliar spaces – and the product of that method – the often lengthy, discursive book- or feature-length documentary that results. Ethnography is distinctive among qualitative research methods in part because of its time commitment, its insistence upon extended experience felt and witnessed, rather than elicited and recounted. It is also experience examined, cross-examined, renewed and re-examined. To navigate as an ethnographer requires negotiated access (sometimes negotiated repeatedly), shifting measures of immersion and reflection, mastery of a mixed toolkit of inquiry, and an acquired ease with uncertainty. If ethnographers commonly find themselves nagged by an aching sense of inadequacy at what they’ve learned, they are nonetheless bent on wresting from it some provisional reconstructions and analyses. Setting aside such signature anxieties, we can also say that ethnography is documentary infused with theory and argument; it is gesture caught, phrased and interpreted. If capturing culture (that staged and enacted document) is its objective, then a certain “talent for the makeshift” (Auden) is essential. Although writing (really: rewriting) remains its preferred medium, it is one rapidly being joined by visual technologies as well, although that variation will not be explored here). This, then, is an intensive seminar in the nuts and bolts of reading and doing such work – and of the reflexivity required to do it well.
This fall our substantive focus will be ethnographies of madness and its treatment, with special attention to emerging work by service users and/or people with direct experience with psychosis – primarily in North America, but touching on experience elsewhere as well.
The root causes of health inequities are numerous and community-or population-specific. They relate to individual, social, and political determinants of health. Because of its multisectoral and multidisciplinary nature, health communication has emerged as an essential discipline in our quest to achieve health and racial equity both in the U.S. and globally. Among others, the ever increasing socioeconomic divide in the US and in a variety of countries, the persistence of social discrimination in our society (e.g., racism, gender bias, bias toward low-income groups or the LGBTQI+ community, xenophobia, and other forms of implicit and/or institutional bias) as a key barrier to health and well-being, the “empathy crisis”, as well as the disproportionate burden of the COVID-19 pandemic among marginalized, vulnerable and underserved groups have demonstrated that making health communication programs work requires the active participation of affected individuals, communities, and multiple professional sectors in the design of health communication interventions. This involves a diversity-minded, system-driven, and population-specific approach to the development of health communication interventions. This approach also includes a systematic effort to rebuild trust among many groups and stakeholders and address barriers that prevent people from leading healthy and productive lives as well as message design strategies that are based on storytelling and cultural humility principles. This course focuses on a review and critical analysis of health communication approaches and strategies that are inclusive of marginalized, vulnerable and underserved populations and seek to improve health and social outcomes among these groups. The course discusses the role of health communication in the health equity movement, and will prepare students to design effective health communication interventions to reach and engage a variety of groups in support of health and racial equity.
New media, including online and digital media technologies, are introducing significant change in contemporary societies and lifestyles. Recent examples include the rapid and powerful diffusion of social media and mobile technologies. The emergence of new media and the online revolution intersect with public health in many ways, raising new questions and affording new opportunities for intervention. Public health professionals of the 21st century must attend to and leverage these trends.
This course will introduce and contextualize the role of new media in public health and prepare students to utilize new media tools when designing interventions. The student learning experience is designed to demonstrate new media technologies through a blend of online and classroom modalities, allowing students to take the perspectives of technology users, designers, implementers, and researchers. The course will introduce examples of new media in public health through demonstrations, guest speakers, and literature, and synthesize significant lessons across examples. Students will also engage in design of a new media technology-based project. While learning about the practice of designing and implementing new media tools for public health, the students will take a critical social science perspective, drawing on literature from social informatics and social science of technology. The course is intended for MPH students, particularly those completing certificates in Health Communication, Public Health Informatics, or Health Promotion Research and Practice. This
is a required course for the Health Communication certificate.
This seminar is designed for pre-doctoral students from the Departments of Sociomedical Sciences, Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Population and Family Health who have been accepted to the T32, on Social Determinants of HIV, a training grant sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health. Students in this T32 program are required to take this 2-year seminar (1 credit per semester). The seminar will highlight structural interventions designed to reduce the impact of HIV among underrepresented populations, professional development issues; funding mechanisms such as diversity supplements, diverse research careers for doctoral students in public health, and guest speakers who are experts in HIV structural interventions and social determinants of health. Students will lead many of the seminar discussions and they are given the opportunity to present their work in progress. Graded on a pass/fail basis.
This seminar is both a critical survey of empirical evidence on foreign aid, trade, and investment and an introduction to modern quantitative research methods used in international political economy. Substantively, the seminar will examine the relationships between economic instruments and human rights, conflict, public opinion, and other topics. It will introduce students to cutting-edge debates in the field. How can the international community best promote human rights? What international factors lead to economic growth? When do countries comply with international laws? When do the economic activities of the international community lead to conflict? More generally, the course will consider the challenges of drawing causal inferences in the field of international political economy.
The seminar will discuss empirical research designs including instrumental variables, field experiments, and regression discontinuity designs. We will read recent scholarship on political economy topics with a critical focus. Students will also produce a research proposal for studying a topic related to political economy, though they do not need to actually conduct this research.
Clinical Seminar in Adult-Gerontology Acute Care is designed to provide the AG-ACNP student an academic environment in which the students share their practicum experience and present case studies and journal articles for discussion with their peers. In this scholarly forum, the students are expected to present selected cases from their practicum in an organized format. The students are expected to facilitate a class dialogue and offer appropriate references.
This course will provide an opportunity to synthesize and integrate the advanced practice knowledge and skills acquired through all previous didactic and clinical coursework. Students will be expected to do clinical case presentations, manage a group of patients of varying diagnoses and variability of acuity, and practice with increasing independence in the acute care advanced practice role.
Credits increased from 4 to 5, effective Spring 2021.
This course engages the advanced practice student in the basics of diagnostic radiology and point-of-care radiologic assessment necessary for today’s practitioner. The course offers the advanced practice student the opportunity to understand the process for selecting appropriate imaging modalities, and also challenges the student to develop novice-level competence in the interpretation of select diagnostic imaging of adults.
In this course we undertake a comprehensive review of the literature on the causes of war and the conditions of peace, with a primary focus on interstate war. We focus primarily on theory and empirical research in political science but give some attention to work in other disciplines. We examine the leading theories, their key concepts and causal variables, the causal paths leading to war or to peace, and the conditions under which various outcomes are most likely to occur. We also give some attention to the degree of empirical support for various theories and hypotheses, and we look at some of the major empirical research programs on the origins and expansion of war. Our survey includes research utilizing qualitative methods, large-N quantitative methods, formal modeling, and experimental approaches. We also give considerable attention to methodological questions relating to epistemology and research design. Our primary focus, however, is on the logical coherence and analytic limitations of the theories and the kinds of research designs that might be useful in testing them. This course is designed primarily for graduate students who want to understand and contribute to the theoretical and empirical literature in political science on war, peace, and security. Students with different interests and students from other departments can also benefit from the seminar and are also welcome. Ideally, members of the seminar will have some familiarity with basic issues in international relations theory, philosophy of science, research design, and statistical methods.
Law is often considered to be the opposite of violence: Promising to deliver us from the cycles of violence preceding its arrival, it sets its task as the establishment of a normative order that sanctions arbitrary and illegitimate uses of violence, derives its legitimacy from our consent, and guarantees formal equality to everyone under its rule. Various critics have challenged this conventional understanding of law, however, and examined the numerous ways in which law finds itself entangled with the very violence that it aims to combat. They have pointed out how the enforcement of law often entails the use of coercion and force, that legal decisions involve legitimations of state violence, and that the provision of rights often goes hand in hand with the entrenchment of social inequality and domination.
Taking Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” as a focal point, this course examines a wide range of critical perspectives on the relationship between law and violence. Following our study of Benjamin, we turn to the deconstructionist perspectives represented by Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler. Then we move to the biopolitical critique developed by Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Roberto Esposito. Following these continental perspectives, we turn to the American scene and read the criticisms developed by Robert Cover as well as Critical Legal Studies (e.g., Duncan Kennedy, Roberto Unger) and Critical Race Theory (e.g., Derrick Bell, Patricia Williams). In the final section, we examine three thinkers who strive to chart a path beyond the impasses we studied and navigate the aporias arising from law’s entanglement with violence (albeit in very different ways): Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, and Christoph Menke.
This course focuses on the complex nature of common coexisting diseases and their influence on safe delivery of nurse anesthesia care in the perioperative period. Throughout this coure, learners will evaluate information obtained during physical and psychological assessment, review patient data and preoperative testing, and synthesize knowledge to formulate safe, individualized, perioperative anesthesia management plans for patients.
Cultural humility will be incorporated into care plans to develop anesthetic management individualized to patient identities and cultures while including an emphasis on social and cultural health disparities.
This course will be based on the nurse anesthesia resident (NAR) functioning in simulated anesthesia crisis scenarios. The NAR will complete assignments, which will focus on crisis management in the perioperative setting. A thorough review of crisis resource management and debriefing skills will be discussed. Each NAR will participate in high-fidelity simulation and debriefing exercises to prepare them for independent management in the clinical setting after graduation.
Clinical experiences provide the opportunity for students to integrate theoretical basis of practice within the clinical setting. Students move along a continuum from healthy adults and children to patients with multi-system failures. The focus is on perioperative theory transfer, development of assessment skills, and the implementation and evaluation of a plan of care. Patient interviews and teaching are integral to the process. Basic principles of decision making are emphasized throughout. Mastery to the specific level of competency is required within a specific time framework. Practice settings include operating rooms, emergency rooms, and diagnostic suites. CRNA faculty members act as facilitators of learning. Clinical conferences and professional meetings help to reinforce and evaluate learning. This is the second of four required residencies.
Nuclear weapons are often considered to pose humanity’s gravest danger. Yet despite nuclear threats and crises, states have managed to avoid the deliberate or inadvertent use of nuclear weapons since the end of World War II. Eighty years after Hiroshima, how has nuclear war been avoided? Did the advent of nuclear weapons create a revolution in military affairs that stalemated major powers and dramatically reduced the prospects of great power war by the emergence of mutual vulnerability and mutual assured destruction (MAD) postures? Or are nuclear weapons central to great power competition and valuable instruments of force, including for deterrence and coercion? Is there a taboo against nuclear use? Do the major theories about the nuclear era match actual practice and how has nuclear theory evolved? Are the strategies and approaches that were employed in the past still appropriate for the new multipolar nuclear age? Why do some states acquire nuclear weapons while others that have considered going nuclear (e.g., South Korea and Germany) so far forego the option, while still others (e.g., South Africa and Ukraine) have given up their nuclear weapons? What are the prospects for continued nuclear proliferation and hedging (e.g., Iran)?
This class will explore past and current patterns of behavior among existing, potential, and former nuclear weapons states. Other questions that animate this course include: What do nuclear weapons actually deter? Can they be used for coercion? How do operational plans and force postures serve military and political objectives? What are the incentives, disincentives and risks of strategies premised on deliberate escalation to nuclear use? Do they increase the probability of inadvertent use of nuclear weapons? What role do nuclear weapons play in U.S. strategy and security policies? How does the U.S. experience compare to those of other nuclear weapon states, such as USSR/Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea? This seminar will examine such questions to gain a better understanding of the importance of nuclear weapons for international relations.
Clinical experiences provide the opportunity for students to integrate theoretical basis of practice within the clinical setting. Students move along a continuum from healthy adults and children to patients with multi-system failures. The focus is on perioperative theory transfer, development of assessment skills, and the implementation and evaluation of a plan of care. Patient interviews and teaching are integral to the process. Basic principles of decision making are emphasized throughout. Mastery to the specific level of competency is required within a specific time framework. Practice settings include operating rooms, emergency rooms, and diagnostic suites. CRNA faculty members act as facilitators of learning. Clinical conferences and professional meetings help to reinforce and evaluate learning. This is the second of four required residencies.
This seminar will prepare students for the Global Health certificate 6-month practicum with the aim of meeting each student's goals for the experience, as well as departmental requirements for the practicum and Master's Integrative Project (or thesis or Capstone, depending on department). The seminar will devote several sessions to cross-cultural training, i.e. preparation to enter a new culture and work environment with comfort, understanding and respect" Cross cultural discussions will include an exploration of each student's unique background in terms of nationality, ethnicity, education and work experiences, and discussion of the importance of culture, behavior, work environment norms and power relations in cross cultural experiences. Students will to begin to develop their practicum scope of work through discussion with GHT faculty, staff, and returning students, and finalize their practicum plans by the end of the semester. Finally, several sessions will be devoted to the logistics of the practicum, i.e., financial issues, living arrangements, health and safety, visas and other administrative matters."
This final clinical residency is to enable the Nurse Anesthesia Resident (NAR) to transition to practice.The NAR precepted in the clinical area requires supervision appropriate to their level of training. For Nurse Anesthesia Residency V, the NAR’s professional growth, asassessed by the preceptor, will determine the level of supervision by the preceptor, but not to be less than induction, emergence and all key portions of case. Also, the preceptor must be immediately available for consultation. The AANA does not permit the NAR to be supervised by a resident-in-training or anesthesiologist assistant.
Clinical focus is on the delivery of anesthesia care in a broad range of clinical settings to patients with multi-system problems. Emphasis is placed on refinement and perfection of decision-making skills in patient care management and rapid assessment of health status of patients. Collaborative practice within a team structure is emphasized. In addition to direct patient care, participation in journal club, clinical case reports, and in-service presentations to a multidisciplinary audience provide the environment for the NARto enact his or her role as a clinical nurse specialist. Experience includes obstetrics, neurosurgery, cardio-thoracic surgery, pediatrics, post anesthesia care and critical care units. CRNA faculty members and preceptors act as guides.
This final clinical residency is to enable the Nurse Anesthesia Resident (NAR) to transition to practice.The NAR precepted in the clinical area requires supervision appropriate to their level of training. For Nurse Anesthesia Residency V, the NAR’s professional growth, asassessed by the preceptor, will determine the level of supervision by the preceptor, but not to be less than induction, emergence and all key portions of case. Also, the preceptor must be immediately available for consultation. The AANA does not permit the NAR to be supervised by a resident-in-training or anesthesiologist assistant.
Clinical focus is on the delivery of anesthesia care in a broad range of clinical settings to patients with multi-system problems. Emphasis is placed on refinement and perfection of decision-making skills in patient care management and rapid assessment of health status of patients. Collaborative practice within a team structure is emphasized. In addition to direct patient care, participation in journal club, clinical case reports, and in-service presentations to a multidisciplinary audience provide the environment for the NARto enact his or her role as a clinical nurse specialist. Experience includes obstetrics, neurosurgery, cardio-thoracic surgery, pediatrics, post anesthesia care and critical care units. CRNA faculty members and preceptors act as guides.
This is a Law School course. For more detailed course information, please go to the Law School Curriculum Guide at: http://www.law.columbia.edu/courses/search
Inspired both by advances in data availability and a growing scholarly appreciation for the political influence of the private sector, firm-level theories and research designs have grown increasingly popular among political economy scholars in recent years. While studying firms allows for the generation of new insights across a broad array of substantive topics, it carries with it several unique conceptual and empirical challenges. For example, how should we conceive of firms as political actors, given their organizational structures? What are firms’ policy preferences? How do they influence politics, and how can we measure their impact? In this course we will review political economy research that centers the firm as the actor of interest; particular focus will be given to recently published work that is innovative in terms of methodology, measurement, and/or data collection. While we will focus primarily on international political economy applications—for example, firm-level studies of trade, in-vestment, and commercial diplomacy—we will also cover less inherently international topics such as lobbying, environmental politics, and private governance/corporate social responsi-bility. In addition to providing preparation for the IR field exam, this course aims to give students the tools to conduct state-of-the-art political economy research at the firm level.
The second in a series of three courses that provides critical analysis of selected topics in nurse anesthesiology practice. Lecture and discussion facilitate integration of didactic content with clinical experiences, as NARs learn to integrate DNP Competencies into clinical practice.
This course is the culmination of a series of four courses designed to guide students through the development, implementation, and dissemination of their doctoral scholarly project (DSP). In this final course, students will focus on synthesizing the findings from their completed project and disseminating the results to relevant audiences. Emphasis is placed on preparing students to translate their evidence-based findings into clinical practice, policy, or education through various dissemination strategies, including manuscript preparation, conference presentations, and stakeholder engagement. This course fosters professional growth, leadership, and a commitment to advancing the field of nurse anesthesia through scholarly contributions.
Section one: This seminar exposes students to career paths and professional development in the field of public health communication. Students will work with career service experts to gain professional skills in resume writing, interview training and online portfolio development specifically tailored to health communication careers. Students will gain insight into the scope of career options and the pathways to these careers by interacting with recent graduates and seasoned experts in health communication. Additionally, students will acquire skills in designing health communication tools (i.e. newsletters). The seminar will address career development issues specific to students' matriculation in the MPH program at the MSPH. **Required for first-year Health Communication Certificate students.
Section two: This interactive seminar will teach students essential communication skills and strengthen students’ ability to utilize innovative, media-based strategies to address public health challenges. Through hands-on workshops, students will be introduced to graphic design, social media management and content production, digital strategy and analytics, and storytelling. This course will equip students with skills needed to promote public health campaigns using visual communications and digital media. Additionally, students will gain an understanding of how they can use social media to achieve organizational objectives and measure the effectiveness of those efforts. This class will ensure that public health students graduate with a skillset in the areas of media, communications and graphics.
The colloquium, brings together all students at the same level within the Ph.D. program and enriches the work of defining the dissertation topic and subsequent research and writing.
In what has become a near-throwaway line, millions of Americans face sustained residential instability.
At the extreme end are the street-dwelling homeless poor. Others are less dire: Growing numbers are
living cars and tents or other encampments, some of them officially “sanctioned” as surrogate homes.
Many more are doubling up. Nor is this a recent development: the pandemic may have thrown into sharp
relief the life-threatening consequences of losing one’s home, but the problem itself is decades old and
growing. The recent influx of migrants in NYC has provoked reconsideration of long-standing policy,
with an impact still be to be assessed. Increased attention to racial injustice has focused attention on both
the disproportionate racial impact of homelessness and its criminalization, especially with respect to the
overlap with psychiatric disorder. Popular perception to the contrary, mass homelessness has not always
been with us; nor has it ever shown the distinctive characteristics that it bears today.
This course will examine modern homelessness from the early 1980s to the present, scrutinizing its
evolution from urgent humanitarian crisis to a seemingly permanent, and increasingly criminalized,
feature of American urban life. We will examine its causes, complicating factors, and actual/potential
solutions, including a focus on legal issues, strategies, and the role that lawyers have played and can play
in addressing this critical social problem. We will consider strategies including litigation and legislative,
regulatory, and human rights advocacy. Our approach will be interdisciplinary, integrating legal issues
with readings and approaches from anthropology and public health, among other disciplines. We will
briefly consider homelessness across the US but place particular emphasis on its distinctive history –
civic and legal – as it is unfolding in New York City.
Readings will include court papers and cases, pending legislation/litigation (if any), ethnographic and
social science studies, research reports, and public health analyses, supplemented by video documentaries
and “field” exercises. Brief cameos by guest speakers – including advocates, people with lived experience
on the street, and veterans of proven service programs, usually by ZOOM –
TBD
The evolution of architectural discourse particularly as it has emerged during the late 19th or 20th century through the publication of critical/polemical magazines or other documents. Emphasis on primary texts. Addresses the intrinsic substance of the discourse, the interweaving and interrelationship of themes, sources, the nature of the debate, the respective values involved, and establishes the significance of the material under consideration in relation to the changing context in which it emerged.
This course explores risk communication theories and strategies, and their application to effective communication in public health settings. The processes and effects of persuasive communication as they relate to message framing are also explored. Students learn how to use effective communication to advance individual and community-level decision-making about public health issues. Specifically, health risk communication through interpersonal, organizational, and mediated channels will be explored, with particular attention paid to message features that are believed to generate predictable effects. Students will learn how communication impacts the public’s experience of health risks, and will practice designing and delivering culturally competent messages about potential health hazards. This course is highly experiential and provides students opportunities to practice delivering a variety of public health messages and receive peer and expert feedback in the protected environment of the classroom.
In recent years, a global movement has begun around menstruation, ranging from research and policies addressing the barriers that school girls may be facing in low-resource contexts, to initiatives fighting the on-going stigma experienced by girls, women and people with periods in high- and low resource contexts, to the advocacy focused on period poverty. How did this global movement begin? What is the existing evidence base for addressing menstruation as a public health issue? And what gaps remain? The purpose of this course is to provide students with a foundation on the topic of menstruation, including the existing research, program and policy approaches underway globally, to equip students with an understanding of the research methodologies most appropriate for understanding the experiences of those who menstruate, and the ways in which advocacy has served to shift attention to this fundamental issue. Students in this course will learn to analyze the current status of the global menstruation movement through debates, news media critiques, and a proposal addressing ‘new frontiers’ in menstruation. The course fits into the MPH curriculum in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences by increasing students’ knowledge and skills of key perspectives and approaches to research and intervention around menstruation that include social science theories.
This class will provide an overview of qualitative research methods to help you develop an applied and advanced understanding of the possibilities that qualitative research offers. In this course you will practice designing a qualitative research study, and collecting, coding and analyzing data. Further, you will read methods literature and qualitative studies as well as critique qualitative work.
Course lectures will begin with foundations in the principles and practice of social science research in public health using qualitative research methodologies. The course will then proceed with a focus on the main types of qualitative data collection: ethnographic methods, interviewing focus groups, and mixed methods. It will introduce you to the idea of emergent themes, including a grounded theory approach. It will explore the importance of triangulation and other strategies for improving validity and reliability in qualitative research. Several classes will be dedicated using Atlas.ti programming. You will collect and analyze qualitative data in this course and participate in live classroom-based exercises (e.g. interviewing, focus group, coding) in smaller groups that allow time for discussion and re-doing.
The course will further emphasize the art of coding, thematic analysis, and written presentation of the results of qualitative analysis. This is an applied course, emphasizing hand-on work gathering and analyzing qualitative data and skill building appropriate for research positions, further graduate study, or applied public health settings where learning from observation or speaking with people is important. This course builds on the Qualitative Foundations of the Core and Intro to Sociomedical Science Research Methods (P8774).
This course investigates in-depth the significance of resistance among African-descended communities in the Anglophone, Francophone, Hispanophone and Lusophone Atlantic Worlds from approximately 1700-2000. We will examine the genesis, forms, and limits of resistance within the context of key historical transformations such as slavery and abolition, labor and migration, and transatlantic political organizing. The class will explore the racial epistemologies, racialized labor regimes, and gendered discourses that sparked a continuum of cultural and political opposition to oppression among Black Atlantic communities. The course will also reflect on how resistance plays a central role in the formation of individual and collective identities among black historical actors.Resistance will be explored as a critical category of historical analysis, and a central factor in the making of the “Black Atlantic.”
This course will provide a structured environment in which graduate students will write a research paper. It will be offered in the spring and will not be field-specific. It will be recommended for first-year students in particular, who will be expected to enter from GR8910 (the required first-year course) and with a topic and/or prospectus for the paper they plan to complete in the course. The aim of the course is to ensure that all PhD students complete one of their two research papers within the first year. This seminar is recommended for, and restricted to, PhD students in the History Department. The aim of the seminar is to guide and assist students in the completion of a 10,000-12,000 word research paper appropriate for publication in a scholarly journal. The seminar is not field-specific, and students may work on any subject of their choosing. The paper must however be based on primary source research and represents a substantial departure from earlier work. The assignments for the course are designed to help students complete a polished piece of work by the end of term.
It is a common-place that the twentieth century ended with the establishment of capitalism and democracy as the “one best way”. In triumphalist accounts of the end of the Cold War the two are commonly presented as sharing a natural affinity. As never before the democratic formula was recommended for truly global application. To suggest the possibility of a contradiction between capitalism and democracy has come to seem like a gesture of outrageous conservative cynicism, or leftist subversion. And yet the convergence of capitalism and democracy is both recent and anything other than self-evident. It has been placed in question once again since 2008 in the epic crisis of Atlantic financial capitalism. This course examines the historical tensions between these two terms in the Atlantic world across the long 20th century from the 1890s to the present day.
Supervised Reserach for Classical Studies Graduate Students.
All graduate students are required to attend the department colloquium as long as they are in residence. No degree credit is granted.
The Classical Studies Research Seminar offers students of the Classical Studies Graduate Program the opportunity to present their research and receive feedback on it. It is mandatory for CLST students who are in their dissertation phase to present their work once every academic year in the CLST Research Seminar or CLST Research Group.
Prerequisite: Course Application.
A Capstone Workshop is a live consulting project with an external client outside of SIPA. Each workshop partners a team of about 6 graduate students with a faculty advisor. The goal is to provide clients with innovative analysis and practical recommendations while SIPA students gain experience by working on a real-world problem. A core requirement for the Master of International Affairs (MIA), Master of Public Administration (MPA), the workshops give students an opportunity to put learning into practice. Serving as their culminating educational experience at SIPA, students work in teams of 6-8 students under the guidance of an expert faculty advisor to work on a real-world consultancy project with an external client. For more information, visit:
https://www.sipa.columbia.edu/sipa-education/capstone-workshops.