Russia's war against Ukraine has multiplied Eurasia's connections with the wider world. This graduate seminar examines these connections beyond the usual boundaries of the “post-Soviet space.” Topics include wartime exiles and refugees, independent media in exile, disinformation and transnational repression, oligarchs and their enablers, sanctions evasion, shifting energy flows, and the changing roles of China, Central Asia, the South Caucasus, Türkiye, and the Gulf. The course also addresses broader global debates over empire, regionalism, decolonization, and whether “Eurasia” remains a useful analytical category.
Please note that this section of Foundations of VC is application-based only and only open to students enrolled in the Venture Fellows Program. Students interested in taking this course should consider B8439 Foundations of Venture Capital: https://courses.business.columbia.edu/B8439
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Foundations of Venture Capital is very experiential. Learnings will be applied to companies that are currently fundraising and you will assess each company as if you were considering investing. There will be 2-3 guest lecturers (in addition to the startup pitches) from experts in the ecosystem so students get a varied perspective. Real company info will be shared in this class. As a result, class slides will be handed out in class but not shared electronically and class sessions will not be recorded.
Machine learning, broadly defined as analytic techniques that fit models algorithmically by adapting to patterns in data, is growing in use across many areas within public health and healthcare. This course is intended for students with existing training in epidemiology and basic biostatistics who seek an introduction to the use of machine learning within epidemiologic research and practice. This includes an overview of key-terms and commonly-used algorithms, debates of the ethical and scientific considerations on the use of data-driven analytics when the goals are improvements in public health and causal inference and in-depth discussions about common implementations of machine learning within the current epidemiologic literature. Using a flipped classroom format, the course will combine online lecture videos with in-class discussions and group exercises to ensure a balance of substantive knowledge and practical skills. Through this hybrid learning approach, students will learn to apply critical thinking techniques as they explore the opportunities and limitations of using machine learning within the context of epidemiology. Throughout the duration of the course, all classes will include clear examples from the epidemiologic literature, discussions on ethical issues surrounding the use of machine learning and hands-on programming exercises in R/R Studio. After completion of this course, students will be able to discuss scenarios where machine learning can (and cannot) benefit epidemiologic analysis, analyze public health data using commonly-used machine learning techniques in R software, and pursue either more in-depth technical training or informed collaborations with scientists with specialized machine learning expertise.
This seminar, taught by adjunct practitioners Kristin Gilbertson and Andrew Gundlach 01, focuses on portfolio management for family offices, public endowments and private foundations, and to a lesser extent pension funds. The class will introduce the various investment strategies employed, the development of an investment policy, asset allocation, risk management, the choice between active vs. passive management, consideration in evaluating fees and incentive structures, liquidity management, the manager search process, operational due diligence and ongoing performance monitoring. Public and private equity strategies (long only, hedged, PE, VC and direct investments in equities) will be the primary focus, though macro, event arbitrage and fixed income/credit will also be reviewed. Also to be discussed are asset allocation and implementation are influenced by important considerations such as investor tax status, philanthropic goals, societal values, liabilities and payout ratios. There will be guest speakers, and the final exam will be a semester-long project of relevance in the field. This is an application based course, which is not open to the bidding process.
Whether you want to follow a career in private equity or just want to know how to intelligently analyze investment opportunities, define successful strategies and manage companies, this course will build on concepts learned in the introductory Private Equity course and provide you with the necessary skills to be a successful value-oriented private equity investor, while understanding the particular challenges of investing in Emerging Markets.
Through a combination of lectures, case discussions, real life examples and a Private Equity Game Simulation this course focuses primarily on the two key components of a successful private equity business:
Analyzing & Selecting Investment Opportunities
and
Managing Portfolio Companies, with a special focus on crafting winning marketing strategies
.
The skills & toolkit you’ll learn in this course, go beyond Private Equity. Analyzing & valuating businesses, implementing operational improvements and realizing value for shareholders are key activities for any organization, especially those operating in Emerging Markets.
This course builds on the basics covered in the Private Equity Finance course and
focuses on three main issues: 1) Value creation through strategic marketing analysis of opportunities, 2) Management of portfolio companies
and 3) How these concepts apply in Emerging Markets
Specifically, we will review key models and frameworks used by top world-class PE practitioners and management consultants to evaluate deals, to better understand industries, drivers of value, players and the likelihood of success of different business models.
Additionally, we will focus on how to manage portfolio companies to achieve superior returns and how to diagnose, solve, recommend and implement top strategic corporate decisions.
All of these skills will be developed and discussed through the lens of Emerging Markets, paying particular attention to the added complexity that these markets bring to PE investment, mainly regarding macro risks, information asymmetry, governance and other issues.
The course´s ultimate objective is to develop a disciplined, structured and analytical approach to consistently help you evaluate deals and manage investment opportunities in Emerging Markets.
Learning Objectives & Course Overview: To understand the spectrum of investment theses, from very specific to more opportunistic. To understand the process of developing an investment thesis (different roles, who is involved, what resources are needed). To start to build a perspective on a specific sector as an early stage (Seed / Series A) investor. This course will cover different sectors each time it is taught, and it is not meant to be a deep dive on any one particular sector There will be 2-3 guest lectures where students will hear investors share their firms investment thesis, so students get a varied perspective. Real company info will be shared in this class. As a result, class slides will be handed out in class but not shared electronically and class sessions will not be recorded. Intended Audience: Aspiring investors who want to understand how investors develop an investment thesis Founders who want to understand how seed investors evaluate startups. This course is not intended for students who want to deep dive on a particular sector or who want to specifically focus on growth and later stages of VC investing. This course will not go deep into these topics: Strategic VCs (corporate/government/university), organizational structure (the merits of having a deep platform team) and governance of a fund (compensation, investment decision voting).
This course will provide an introduction to the existing research on sexual and gender minority (SGM) health with a specific emphasis on epidemiologic theory and methods. Through readings and group discussions we will cover issues related to the design of epidemiologic studies that focus on different sexual and gender minority populations (e.g., queer cisgender populations and transgender and non-binary populations). In addition the course will review the sexual and gender minority health literature as it pertains to group differences (e.g., race, socioeconomic status), using intersectionality as a conceptual and methodological framework. Lectures will include both content- and methods-focused components. Substantive topics of focus include social determinants of health and specific health outcomes and health behaviors, such as HIV, substance use and mental health burdens. Methodological issues that are particularly challenging in sexual and gender minority health will be discussed, including sampling sexual and gender minority populations, causal inference methods in sexual and gender minority health research, and analytical approaches in epidemiologic studies of sexual and gender minority populations.
This course provides students with the opportunity to apply epidemiologic principles and methods and develop foundational skills necessary to critically evaluate the existing sexual and gender minority health research literature. This course fulfills an elective requirement for the Social Determinants of Health certificate. Participation in class discussion, experiential learning activities, and a final paper will be used to evaluate progress towards learning objectives.
B8332 Real Estate Transactions is recommended. The goal of this course is to make you knowledgeable and conversant about the principles of real estate investing as applied to purchasing distressed assets. The Covid crisis is only the most recent example of how changes in the economy or capital markets can have a profound impact on real estate investors. During the Great Recession and the US Savings and Loan crisis before that, real estate assets suffered appreciable losses, and thus also provided an opportunity for investors to find new opportunities to recapitalize and reposition troubled properties and companies. As both a physical asset and an investment asset with a defined location in space, real estate is strikingly different from other asset classes. It is a long-lived asset that depends on attractive financing, rental increases, and long-term appreciation to maintain its value. Real estate forms part of the alternative investment asset class and institutional investors target a substantial part of their alternatives portfolio in real estate. The class will cover both US and international distressed investments and across traditional and niche sectors. The goal is to provide students with the tools to identify and purchase distressed real estate assets globally and to target superior risk-adjusted rates of return.
This course will focus on investing in private credit up and down the debt stack including senior secured, mezzanine, unsecured, and convertible debt from both an origination and secondary market perspective. In addition, there will be an introduction to portfolio construction and management including workouts and loan sales.
Real estate accounts for one third of the capital assets around the world. You simply cannot ignore it in as an investor or in any business, whether the business is called real estate or not. The last few years have seen a rapid increase in the use of Big Data in the real estate industry. Much more data have become available that allow companies to radically improve their decision making and create value in ways that are rapidly transforming the real estate industry. This course will use tools from business analytics and new, large real estate datasets to help shed light on important questions in residential and commercial real estate. The course will foster both conceptual understanding and hands-on skill acquisition through coding in Python. This course is meant both for students with strong programming background who want to learn more about real estate and for students of real estate who want to beef up their data analytics skills.
Python knowledge needs to be demonstrated by passing the CBS Python advanced-proficiency exam (B0002). Anyone who has not taken "Python for MBAs" and woud like to register for that class should email python@gsb.columbia.edu to arrange a special sitting of the advanced qualification exam.
Taiwan is a leading example of democratic transition and consolidation, the sole culturally Chinese democracy, one of four “Asian tigers” that forged a model of state-led economic development, the world’s 22nd largest economy, the dominant producer of high-end computer chips that power the 21st century economy, and a strategic hot spot considered “the most dangerous place on earth” in the context of U.S.-China strategic competition. It is the site of intense political contestation over national identity and complex electoral and party politics, and the target of advanced cognitive warfare from mainland China. It contends with problems of societal resilience in the domains of energy, food supply, communications, civil defense, and other fields. This course examines Taiwan’s political development, institutions, parties, elections, identity politics, social movements, political economy, and foreign/China policy, while placing Taiwan in comparative perspective to explore the extent to which its experiences are unique or illustrate general theories of political development, economic development, party politics, and international relations.
The primary objectives in this course are to learn to systematically review and summarize primary research in chronic disease epidemiology, to synthesize scientific evidence to establish causal inference, and to understand how this evidence relates to scientific decision making for improving health outcomes. In this course, we will evaluate 4 topics in the epidemiology of chronic diseases. By the end of the semester, students will improve their ability to interpret the literature on current topics in chronic disease epidemiology and will be able to evaluate how the evidence can inform health decision making and causal inference. Readings will be based upon publications highlighted in the Dean’s Seminar Series on Chronic Disease and the Department of Epidemiology’s Chronic Disease Cluster seminars.
This course is an intro to intermediate level infectious disease mathematical modeling methodological class. It will introduce the fundamental principles of infectious disease modeling. Emphasis will be given to compartmental meta-population models. Over the course, we will learn a variety of mathematical models for infectious diseases, starting from simple compartmental models to more complex compartmental models with various structures, including multiple risk groups, age groups, spatial network, and multiple hosts. In addition to these models, we will also discuss how key epidemiological parameters (e.g. the basic reproductive number) can be estimated from real disease data. Other topics will include vaccination/antiviral efficacy assessment, survival analysis, and agent based models. Half of the course will be devoted to hands-on computer lab excises, using the R Studio open source program (if students are familiar with Python or Matlab, these programs can be used instead).
Seminar for students in the Social Determinants certificate program
This course is designed to offer a general introduction to early American history from the colonial era to the early national era in North America. The goal of the course is to introduce students to the early American field broadly defined. Through weekly discussions of selected monographs and essays we will explore the key themes of early American history, examine methodological innovations and changes, and explore shifting historiographic trends in this broadly defined chronological field. Accordingly, we will approach our study by examining a few important historical constructs – the representation of the western hemisphere as a New World; the fact that European colonists, their African slaves, and the imperial governments that ruled North America’s settler colonies were part of a larger Atlantic World --connecting people and political regimes in Europe, Africa and the America. And finally, we will wrestle with the fact that as late as the end of the eighteenth century the majority of the North American was controlled by autonomous indigenous peoples making colonial history a story of encounter between an emergent indigenous New World and the peoples and institutions of Europe Empire.
Comparative media is an emergent approach intended to draw upon and interrupt canonical ideas in film and media theory. It adopts a comparative approach to media as machines and aesthetic practices by examining contemporary media in relation to the introduction of earlier technologies. The class also extends our focus beyond the U.S. and Europe by examining other cultural locations of media innovation and appropriation. In doing so, it decenters normative assumptions about media and media theory while introducing students to a range of media practices past and present.
The course is intended to teach students how to apply basic epidemiological and statistical methods and concepts. The material builds on concepts introduced in epidemiology and biostatistics core courses (or the Quant core module), and serves as a bridge to the methods presented in more advanced epidemiology courses. Each session is a combination of didactic lecture and hands-on practice. Students conduct epidemiological analyses on actual data sets, and learn the importance of data preparation and cleaning, descriptive analyses, as well as how to conduct categorical analyses, ANOVA, and linear regression in SAS.
In the last twenty-five years the historical study of museums has ballooned into a veritable separate discipline known as museum studies, which deals with the history of collections, the ideology of the museum as a public institution, and the politics of exhibitions. It is not the intention of this seminar to present an overview of this vast literature but rather to posit a set of questions proper to architectural history that intersect with both the history and historiography of the museum since the mid-18th century, with an overwhelming emphasis on the art (as opposed to the natural history, science, technology, history, or literary) museum. The seminar intertwines two themes at vastly different scales: the inclusive one of the architectural history of the art museum as a building – including all aspects of interior disposition, display strategies and technologies, lighting, exterior form, and urban spatial disposition – and the more highly specialized one of architecture as a subject matter for collecting and display in the museum context. Within art history the focus has been largely on the development of both the architectural and institutional structure of the art museum; but the fact that architecture overlaps issues of aesthetics, of history, and of science and technology, invites us to consider both the question of the architecture of the museum and architecture in the museum from a more comprehensive view of the museum type. In both a set of questions recur: the idea of de-contextualization, of aesthetic experience divorced from use and daily environment, of classification and display, of education and/or vs. entertainment, or cultural hegemony and colonialism.
Generative AI tools, such as Large Language Models (LLMs), represent a subset of artificial intelligence technologies capable of generating new content, including text, images, audio, and video, that mimic human-generated content. Unlike earlier AI approaches, such as machine learning, which are designed to recognize or classify data, generative AI can create novel data outputs by leveraging the patterns, styles, or information it has learned during its training process. This ability to recognize and generate patterns shares many similarities with the goals of Epidemiology, which focuses on identifying patterns of health and disease in populations.
Although these generative AI models are relatively new, their adoption in the research environment, including in Epidemiology, is rapidly increasing. The introduction of LLMs has the potential to revolutionize scientific research by providing unprecedented speed, innovation, and efficiency. This is achieved by enabling novel and compelling ways to explore data. However, the complexity of the neural networks behind these models' decision-making processes and lack of transparency in data training sources can make it challenging to understand how they arrive at specific outcomes and biases. The opacity of these models, coupled with the necessity of training them on potentially biased data sets, underscores the need for responsible use. Therefore, epidemiologists face the challenge of ensuring that research findings generated by AI are real, ethical, and reliable.
This course is designed to introduce LLMs and other AI approaches, highlighting their potential to enhance epidemiological research. It aims to explore innovative ways AI/LLMs can be utilized, understand the ethical considerations involved, investigate the potential public health concerns raised by AI, and examine firsthand applications of AI within the field of public health. The class will include informational lectures on-line and in person, with in-class applied discussions and learning exercises.
This seminar is designed for and only open to first year MPH students enrolled in the Honors MPH Program within the Department of Epidemiology. It is the first semester of a two-semester required seminar series. This seminar will provide students the opportunity to engage in intensive reading, critical analysis, and highly-interactive discussion of empirical epidemiological research with faculty representing a range of domains of epidemiologic scholarship. Students will be required to apply and extend their developing methodological training, practice and demonstrate the ability to make principled arguments, and learn and practice critical professional skills, including the ability to offer and receive critical feedback.
The course is an advanced Mergers & Acquisitions Seminar that focuses on current trends and recent developments in the media industry. The course will be divided into two parts. Each week during Part I will be devoted to the analysis of a different recent media transaction. The pedagogic framework is not structurally different from traditional M&A analysis. The overlay of mediaspecific commercial, strategic and regulatory issues will provide additional insight into a particularly dynamic segment of the economy. Each week will focus on a different transaction type (e.g., cash divesture, cash acquisition, stock merger etc.) different media industry sub-sector (e.g., cable, newspapers, broadcasting etc.) and different aspects of the analytical framework (e.g., financial analysis, corporate governance etc.) Part II will be devoted to group board presentations of hypothetical transactions. Groups must be formed and have their hypothetical transaction approved by the instructor by week 4 of the course. Course grades will be primarily based on the quality of written materials and presentations by the group. Each group member will receive the same grade on their project. 20% of the course grade will be on based on individual weekly homework assignments. Outside speakers/board members with first-hand knowledge of the industries and transactions considered will participate during both Part I and Part II of the course.
Ethnography is often taught as a method of observation. This course begins from a different premise: ethnography is a political technology of knowledge production shaped by empire, race, capital, gender, and disciplinary power. It is also a fragile and unfinished writing practice that scholars continually remake. This seminar treats ethnography as a site of struggle over these questions: Who can produce knowledge? Whose worlds become legible? Which archives endure? What research should refuse to know? And, how writing itself organizes relations of power?
Interdisciplinary group work as part of Dissertation Proposal Seminar series.
This course introduces students to basic research methods used in health policy research. After providing an introduction to regression analysis, the class will focus on developing the skills to enable students to analyze the effect of a government program (or a variable that can be affected by a government program) on health outcomes. Specific learning objectives include: developing data management skills, computing descriptive statistics, and performing regression analysis using Stata, a simple yet powerful and widely-used statistical software package; critically evaluating empirical research conducted by others; and applying skills to evaluate the effect of a publicly provided government program.
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 covers marketing strategy for all players, from biotech startups to pharmaceutical firms and service providers. It has two objectives: Present methods and models used in the life sciences sector, and demonstrate how they are successfully used in current business situations. Key learnings include how to segment consumer and medical markets, brand a new product/service, create a marketing plan for a startup, decide on a pricing approach and integrate online/offline communications. Students customize the course to their needs with a term paper (instead of final exam) based on a consulting assignment for a company.
This course covers marketing strategy for all players, from biotech startups to pharmaceutical firms and service providers. It has two objectives: Present methods and models used in the life sciences sector, and demonstrate how they are successfully used in current business situations. Key learnings include how to segment consumer and medical markets, brand a new product/service, create a marketing plan for a startup, decide on a pricing approach and integrate online/offline communications. Students customize the course to their needs with a term paper (instead of final exam) based on a consulting assignment for a company.
The goal of Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Delivery Systems is to provide students with an understanding of the continuum of post-acute and long-term care. Three perspectives or approaches are used to describe and discuss the structure and function of the continuum of care. First, the continuum is examined as a “system” - that is, a cluster of interrelated components. Next, the continuum is explored from the point of view of public policy - that is, from the perspective of various courses of action open to government to address the financial and care delivery challenges that are present in the continuum and that exists for stakeholders and consumers. Finally, the continuum is analyzed as a market for providers of health care, social services and housing to an expanding population of individuals with chronic care needs.
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.
This is a course about analytical thinking and skills for managers. Our aim is to further develop statistical skills, while emphasizing practical applications, translation to policy, and communicating results. We will spend the first half of the course building technical skills on fundamental and some advanced analytical methods, where each session will be a combination of teaching and practice. Next, we will apply all skills into interactive challenges (including presentation of results), where we will focus on written and visual communication of insights. We will close the class by covering the principles of survey design and analysis, plus utilizing insights for decision-making. We will develop these skills not only through directed challenges, but also through more practical examples, where only general guidance is provided and participants will utilize their own creativity and experience.
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.
Mental health policy is both a field of study and an area of advocacy in which you can engage, no matter where your career takes you. We will grapple with fundamental questions about what mental health is, how we can impact it, and where policy fits in a rapidly changing world. We will build a foundation in current directions and debates in mental health policy as well as explore emerging and frontier issues. You will also gain practical knowledge and skills to bridge theory and practice day-to-day, setting you up to have impact on one of the most foundational issues in public health across your career.
How do unique characteristics of the healthcare industry influence financial management in this sector? What techniques are effective in this field? How can we uses cases to avoid mistakes and to maximize efficiency and ultimately patient health? The goal of this class is to teach the principles necessary for effective financial management in healthcare to individuals who are not experienced financial executives. It is intended to make administrators comfortable in managing the finances of the department or other entity for which they have responsibility.
Information technology and the management of this technology is increasingly critical in healthcare. Healthcare represents a new frontier for information management. This class explores the promises and challenges of health information technology in today's environment. Readings and lectures will focus on the nature and uses of health care information systems in a variety of health care settings. Students will learn fundamental IT terminology, understand how IT fits into the organizational structure in terms of quality of care, financing, and strategic organizational issues as well as project management. They will also learn about opportunities and challenges for IT in healthcare in the future.
The period of Southern history between the end of Reconstruction and World War I, during which the foundation was laid for a Southern Order more durable than any of its predecessors - either the Old South of King Cotton, the Confederate South of the Civil War era, or the Republican south of the Reconstruction. Field(s): US
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The primary goal of environmental regulation is to protect human health, but there are a wide range of options available to policy makers and considerable disagreement over how to best implement regulation. This class focuses on understanding environmental health policy from an economic perspective. After reviewing basic economic concepts relevant for this course, we discuss an economic viewpoint of environmental issues, including when and how to intervene with markets. Since all environmental regulation requires knowledge of the threats posed by environmental exposure, we then focus on measuring the health benefits from environmental policies, recognizing we omit several important non-health benefits. We also briefly discuss the costs posed to society from environmental regulation, an important component of regulatory impact analysis often required by federal rules. We discuss the main approaches to environmental policy in the US, including incentive based approaches, such as tradeable discharge permits, emission taxes and subsidies, and voluntary programs, and the more traditional ‘command and control’ approach. After highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, we apply these concepts to current environmental policy on such topics as air quality, toxic and hazardous waste, climate change, and ozone depletion.
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.
This course exposes students to many of the core concepts and principles of public health required for them to work as administrators in healthcare settings. As managers and administrators, an understanding of these concepts is critically important if they are going to be in positions where they can influence the creation of innovative programs, deliver services, develop policies and ultimately impact the health of local, national and global communities. Students will be asked to learn concepts from a variety of disciplines and how to translate that information into practice. The translation process will occur as they apply their learning to cases that will allow them to discuss the applicability of those concepts in an ever changing public health world and healthcare system.
The Course is the integrating exercise for the Management curriculum and provides students with the opportunity to experience the challenges of executive leadership and strategic decision-making in a realistic exercise that effectively emulates or simulates the full breadth and complexity of organizational decision-making in a complex, competitive marketplace. Using the HealthSquare Simulation and working in teams of 6-7 members, students will act as the executive leadership of a community hospital participating in a multi-hospital market. As hospital executives, they will be required to analyze the position of their institution and to make all decisions central to the successful management of the hospital, including such elements as service line mix, capacity, investment in quality professional/clinical, systems, etc., patient/payer mix, marketing, staffing, financial structure, and so on. Participation in this complex experiential learning experience is supported by group/team work session, readings, lecture/discussions, and presentations. As indicated above, all students are expected to take an active role in each session; the level of class participation will have a major effect on the quality of the Course.
The Course is the integrating exercise for the Management curriculum and provides students with the opportunity to experience the challenges of executive leadership and strategic decision-making in a realistic exercise that effectively emulates or simulates the full breadth and complexity of organizational decision-making in a complex, competitive marketplace. Using the HealthSquare Simulation and working in teams of 6-7 members, students will act as the executive leadership of a community hospital participating in a multi-hospital market. As hospital executives, they will be required to analyze the position of their institution and to make all decisions central to the successful management of the hospital, including such elements as service line mix, capacity, investment in quality professional/clinical, systems, etc., patient/payer mix, marketing, staffing, financial structure, and so on. Participation in this complex experiential learning experience is supported by group/team work session, readings, lecture/discussions, and presentations. As indicated above, all students are expected to take an active role in each session; the level of class participation will have a major effect on the quality of the Course.
The Course is the integrating exercise for the Management curriculum and provides students with the opportunity to experience the challenges of executive leadership and strategic decision-making in a realistic exercise that effectively emulates or simulates the full breadth and complexity of organizational decision-making in a complex, competitive marketplace. Using the HealthSquare Simulation and working in teams of 6-7 members, students will act as the executive leadership of a community hospital participating in a multi-hospital market. As hospital executives, they will be required to analyze the position of their institution and to make all decisions central to the successful management of the hospital, including such elements as service line mix, capacity, investment in quality professional/clinical, systems, etc., patient/payer mix, marketing, staffing, financial structure, and so on. Participation in this complex experiential learning experience is supported by group/team work session, readings, lecture/discussions, and presentations. As indicated above, all students are expected to take an active role in each session; the level of class participation will have a major effect on the quality of the Course.
The Course is the integrating exercise for the Management curriculum and provides students with the opportunity to experience the challenges of executive leadership and strategic decision-making in a realistic exercise that effectively emulates or simulates the full breadth and complexity of organizational decision-making in a complex, competitive marketplace. Using the HealthSquare Simulation and working in teams of 6-7 members, students will act as the executive leadership of a community hospital participating in a multi-hospital market. As hospital executives, they will be required to analyze the position of their institution and to make all decisions central to the successful management of the hospital, including such elements as service line mix, capacity, investment in quality professional/clinical, systems, etc., patient/payer mix, marketing, staffing, financial structure, and so on. Participation in this complex experiential learning experience is supported by group/team work session, readings, lecture/discussions, and presentations. As indicated above, all students are expected to take an active role in each session; the level of class participation will have a major effect on the quality of the Course.
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.
This course is designed to provide an introduction to the methods and growing range of applications of decision analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis in health care technology assessment, medical decision making, and health resource allocation. Course requirements:
1. Class attendance and participation
2. Case assignments
3. A brief essay (research article critique)
4. Final examination
The purpose of this course would be to familiarize its students with the form and function of musicals, and teach them how to work with writers of musicals. I would begin with a fundamental building block of the musical structure: the song. We would look at examples of songs both from musicals and not in order to analyze how songs contain information pertinent to both plot and emotional arcs. After this we would look at examples of classic musical structures. This might include shows and structures like Oklahoma! (for a classic structural template), Guys and Dolls (musical comedy), Gypsy (a dominant singular character), A Chorus Line (a superstructure), Assassins (a show that probably shouldn’t work but does) and A Strange Loop (a show that references many other shows and structures to build its engine.) We would also look at a new musical currently in process in order to determine which notes might be useful, and how to give them. We would also speak with current musical theater writers about the shows they are writing, their inspirations, methods, and various storytelling tools. Lastly, we would discuss the musical theatre industry, and how musicals are made and produced in the current theatrical ecosystem.
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.
Modern industrial democracies face a range of common problems in their health care systems. These include demographic and technological pressures on costs, rising expectations of consumers, the assimilation into medical and policy practice of rapidly growing knowledge about the system's performance, and the tensions that arise when swollen public budgets, slow economic growth, and rising health care costs converge. These nations face these common pressures in quite diverse ways, however. Their responses vary with the historical, cultural, legal, social, and political character of individual countries, and embody significant strategic differences in decisions about coverage, provider payment, funding, and more.
In this course we survey the policy responses of a range of nations to the strains imposed by the evolution of modern health care systems. We isolate the most salient pressures for policy change, trace the debates over and emergence of major strategic options, seek to explain why nations differ in their policy choices, explore the pros and cons of some of these approaches, and draw implications for U.S. policy debates. Students should leave the course with an enhanced understanding of the range of strategic responses to the major policy problems facing modern societies, and this understanding should help them to comprehend more fully both the dynamic environment in which they work and the complexities of health care reform.
Global health is not something that happens to people elsewhere – it is a shared context in which we all are born, lead our lives and die (cheery beginning). Recognizing a shared context in no way implies it is not a context rife with inequities, inequalities, and inefficiencies; it is. In the aftermath of the recent Ebola and Zika outbreaks and against a decades-long fight confronting HIV/AIDS and a millennia-long fight against tuberculosis and malaria, these fissures have been repeatedly exposed, and at times addressed. In the past decade alone, the world has invested billions of dollars in fighting these and other diseases but substantially less to help strengthen developing country health systems, expand health insurance coverage or combat the so-called neglected diseases, such as sleeping sickness, that continue to cause untold suffering. The institutions charged with ‘governing’ global health arguably do not have the requisite mandates, authorities or budgets to meet their respective missions, despite increasing amounts of pressure from donor governments, developing country governments and other constituents to do so. In this course, we will explore questions such as: Which entities govern and finance global health? What is on and off the global health agenda? Who determines what is on the global health agenda? What are recent ‘innovations’ in global health governance and financing? Have various ‘innovations’ worked or not? What are current significant debates in global health governance (e.g., what should World Health Organization reform entail)?
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to applied health services research. Specifically, students will be exposed to real world problems faced by health services researchers and learn how to address these problems. The course will have two major focuses. First, students will be exposed to the basic analytic and biostatistical concepts utilized in health services research. Much of this work is directed at addressing bias and confounding in study design and application. Second, students will be grounded in applied health services research. Specifically, topics addressed will include common problems in health services research across a variety of disciplines, methods to address these problems, and an exploration of policy initiatives that have resulted from health services research. The course will consider a variety of study designs, methodological approaches and concepts that are germane to health services researchers. Further, during the course students will be tasked to implement these concepts in the conduct of a team-oriented project.
The U.S. is one of the only developed countries in the world without a universal health system. Even though the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) expanded public and private insurance coverage, millions of Americans will remain uninsured for the foreseeable future. Many patients without insurance – and many other patients with public insurance – rely on health care safety-net institutions to provide affordable health care. The U.S. health care safety-net is made up of hospitals, community health centers, and private, office-based medical professionals who offer free or subsidized care to poor and other vulnerable patients.
This course will provide an overview of the U.S. health care safety-net and evaluate how health care policies have shaped the evolution and performance of this system. In particular, we will explore the impact of the ACA on the health care safety-net and its future. Students should leave the course with an enhanced understanding of the health care safety-net, its implications for access to health care, and policy challenges associated with maintaining this system.
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.
The type of capital investment used by a healthcare entity can have a profound impact on the financial viability of a healthcare organization. At one end of the spectrum, it can contribute to growth of the company and income generating potential. At the other end of the spectrum, it can create a crushing financial burden on the organization, as it tries to serve its debt obligations or repay its equity investors. It can also hamstring the management of the organization if investors sitting on the board have a different vision from the founders about the strategic direction of the company.
Capital finance therefore has short, medium and long-term consequences for the business opportunities and risks of healthcare organizations that go well beyond the capital investment itself.
Through a mixture of lectures, discussions, case studies and guest lecturers, students will be provided with the tools to understand the raising and allocation of investment capital for strategic and/or investment gain. The course will span the healthcare continuum from product makers (biotech, pharmaceuticals, medical devices,) supply (distributors, PBMs, pharmacies, CROs), payors (HMOs, government) and providers (hospitals, SNFs, Healthcare IT, diagnostics, practioners) and consumers. The course is for students who are interested in seeing how their healthcare management skills can be used in an applied setting.
Over the past three decades, the United States has faced one of the most devastating — and preventable — public health crises in its history. Opioid addiction has fueled record high overdose deaths, increased heroin and fentanyl use, and reshaped communities across the country.
This course dives deeply into how we got here — and what it will take to change course. We’ll examine the historical roots and structural drivers of the epidemic, including how medical practice, industry influence, regulation, stigma, and health systems all intersected to create a perfect storm.
Together, we will explore:
Earlier opioid addiction epidemics — and what we failed to learn
How Purdue Pharma and other opioid manufacturers reshaped opioid prescribing practices
Trends in opioid-related overdose deaths and what they reveal about the crisis
The increasing use of kratom and implications for policy and practice
What effective treatment for opioid use disorder looks like — including the expanding role of harm reduction strategies — and why access remains limited
Students will critically analyze public health responses — asking not only what happened, but what should have happened and what still can be done.
You’ll also step into the role of a state health official responding to the crisis. You will design a targeted intervention, explain it to your governor in a policy memo, and communicate it to the public through an Op-Ed. Along the way, we’ll use the framework of primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention to evaluate impact, feasibility, and ethics.
By the end of the course, students will leave with a sharper understanding of opioid use disorder as a public health issue — and practical tools to design policy and program responses grounded in science, compassion, and equity.
The course will focus on the challenges of providing healthcare in emerging markets in each of the major socio economic regions of the world that have developing countries.
Like in western countries, the health sector is one of the fasted growing and dynamic segments of the economy in many emerging economies, with a total annual revenue flow of over US$7 trillion in 2012. Particularly pressing are issues related to changing epidemiology of aging populations, the lack of funding and resources, poor governance, corruption and shifting demographic and epidemiological trends such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic and drug resistant malaria.
Today there are known and affordable interventions to deal with many of the most difficult public health challenges in developing countries. But the cost to individual households is unpredictable and can impoverish even middle-income families without access to effective health financing instruments. And many interventions are ineffective. Additional resources could be mobilized by increasing the share of government funding allocated to the health sector. Expanding fiscal space could have negative macro economic repercussions in many low-income countries and increasing the relative share allocated to the health sector means giving up public expenditure on other programs, some of which may also contribute to overall gains in health. Both are difficult to achieve politically.
In this context developing countries are increasingly looking at partnerships between the public and private sector to provide needed healthcare for their populations.
There is much talk and enthusiasm about new “value-based” methods of reimbursing for health care services. However, considerable variation exists across different approaches that fall within this broad category -- from incentive-based Pay for Performance (P4P) to Bundled Payments to Shared-Savings Arrangements to Global (Capitated) Payments – in terms of their design, the incentives imbedded within them, and the challenges associated with their implementation on the payer side and the managerial response to them on the provider side. In addition, the reality is that, at least for the near-/mid-term, many of these new approaches are likely to build upon or be put in place beside, rather than completely replace, existing fee-for-service-oriented reimbursement methodologies, such as Medicare’s prospective payment systems for inpatient hospital, physician services, and other care. Therefore, if students are to play their own ‘value-added’ role in as policymakers, as designers of new reimbursement strategies on the payer side, or as health systems managers implementing/managing providers’ responses to new payment initiatives, it is important that they have a solid understanding of the design, issues and incentives associated with both current and emerging health care reimbursement strategies. This course is designed to provide this knowledge.
Students will learn to design an evidence-based and culturally appropriate public health program in US and global contexts. Students will work in a small group throughout the semester to design a public health program on a topic of their choice. Specifically, students will gain competence in analyzing local needs and resources; developing an evidence-based, technically and programmatically sound causal pathway; articulating program objectives; designing relevant technical components; and designing the program’s monitoring and evaluation plan, implementation plan and budget.
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The class explores how laws, policies, and rights function to shape public health, with particular emphasis on the implications of this interaction for rights-based approaches to health programs, policy and advocacy. The course includes an introduction to the principles, provisions and underlying assumptions of law, policy and rights related to public health. Students then have the opportunity to use human rights tools and principles in documentation of health-related human rights violations and formulation of programmatic and advocacy responses to violations. A wide range of issues – HIV, health problems of criminalized populations, autonomy of people living with mental disorders, racial discrimination in health services and related policy, and rights-unfriendly practices of for-profit companies – are used to illustrate the importance of human rights inquiry and analysis in public health.
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This course examines how public health defines and measures the health of adolescents, youth, and young people; how individual, social, environmental, and structural determinants shape their health behaviors and outcomes; where reliable data on young people’s health come from and their limitations; and why investing in this population is critical. Adolescents and young adults represent a large and growing share of the global population, about 1.8 billion people aged 10–24 (nearly 90 percent of whom live in low- and middle-income countries), and investments in their health yield a “triple dividend” for individuals, across the life course, and for future generations. Adolescence and young adulthood are pivotal developmental periods marked by rapid biological, cognitive, emotional, and social change that unfold within shifting social, economic, and cultural contexts. While most young people are considered “healthy” by traditional indicators, slower improvements in adolescent health compared with childhood, persistent engagement in health-compromising behaviors, school dropout, and underuse of health services signal substantial unmet need. Social determinants including poverty, policy environments, education, and access to youth-friendly services, along with family, peer, school, and community support, play a central role in shaping young people’s health and underscore the essential role of public health in improving outcomes during this critical life stage. The first half of the course will focus on fundamentals of adolescent health such as definitions, conceptual models, and adolescent development. The second half will focus on key issues in adolescent health, including site visits to understand several innovative, “youth-friendly” models for adolescent health promotion. Issues such as the HIV among youth, fertility, and marginalization of LGBTQ and justice-involved youth will be framed as public health issues. Key theoretical approaches will be emphasized throughout the course. Young people will be viewed as potentially powerful change agents who are resources to be developed not problems to be fixed. The participation of public health practitioners in developing, implementing, monitoring, evaluating, and advocating for "youth friendly" services grounded in evidence, theory, and human rights will be illustrated and discussed throughout the course. Students will increase their knowledge of adolescent and young adult health through assigned readings, class discussions, group activities, written assi
Public health research, particularly service-based research, is a challenging enterprise. Its execution requires grounding in scientifically based, standardized approaches to research design and implementation, as well as flexibility and skill in adapting those techniques to the unique needs of any program, organization, setting, or population. Many of us have had experience with studies that did not adequately collect data needed to initiate, evaluate, and/or improve whatever health problem or issue it was supposed to. This course provides students with the requisite skills for conducting successful service-based research, including fundamental concepts and components of research design, the development of theory-guided research questions and hypotheses, and decision-making strategies for study designs and data collection protocols and materials. In this course, students will also actively engage in qualitative and quantitative data collection, becoming familiar with field considerations, pre-testing, interviewing techniques, and the design, preparation, and use of topic guides for in-depth interviews and structured questionnaires for surveys. By the conclusion of the course, students will have a complete, self-designed questionnaire ready to field on Qualtrics, and will be able to plan and execute a sound research study.
In this course you will learn to develop and implement a quantitative data analysis plan and to interpret the output of quantitative analyses using datasets from actual evaluation studies. The early phase of the course will focus on essential pre-analytic tasks often overlooked in the research training process. These include identifying and resolving dirty data including logical inconsistencies and conducting simple and complex data transformations. The second half of the course focuses on conducting bivariate and multivariable statistical tests. This is an applied course, emphasizing skill-building through hands-on work using R in each class session. Reflecting the focus on skill-building, this course includes weekly homework using R.
Required breakout for P8617 Research Design and Data Collection. Applies concepts learned in P8617 through small group interactions. All sections cover the same content.
Required breakout for P8617 Research Design and Data Collection. Applies concepts learned in P8617 through small group interactions. All sections cover the same content.
Required breakout for P8617 Research Design and Data Collection. Applies concepts learned in P8617 through small group interactions. All sections cover the same content.
Required breakout for P8617 Research Design and Data Collection. Applies concepts learned in P8617 through small group interactions. All sections cover the same content.
This course is designed to provide students with an overview of key child health problems and programmatic solutions based on the evidence. By studying examples of significant child health problems and solutions in a range of populations in the United States and internationally, students will learn how to define and assess a child health problem and become familiar with public health intervention strategies and their potential impact. In addition, students will gain an understanding of how social and environmental conditions contribute to morbidity and mortality, as well as individual risk within a population and health disparities across populations. The format combines lectures and discussion with team-based learning. Assignments include readings (available on Canvas) to provide background for each session, and team-based exercises and presentations.
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The global movement to realize lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) rights has both gained traction and faced significant pushback in recent years: although global normative and legal frameworks have evolved in some ways to recognize the rights of sexual and gender minorities, LGBTI people around the world are experiencing progress, setbacks, and scapegoating. The course will apply concepts of equity, access, inclusion, and human rights to interrogate how and why sexual and gender minorities are often excluded from humanitarian and development interventions despite the compounding oppressions that they face. Drawing upon the practice of public health and human rights work from humanitarian crises and low- and middle-income countries around the world, this course will explore how practitioners and advocates can best understand the evolution of LGBTI human rights in a variety of contexts; students will also probe how to become effective and supportive partners and allies to grassroots movements and organizations. Through a series of case studies, students will examine how LGBTI people are challenging the gender binary in societies around the world, including biases inherent in the structures of humanitarian and development work, and how such activists, advocates, and artists are mobilizing to ensure their inclusion in decision-making fora and their access to health and other services. Students will also consider and develop strategies to support local activists in these movements; these activists embody the intrinsic vulnerability of being sexual and gender minorities in countries where those identities are criminalized, the courage of those determined to change their societies, and the cunning to seize upon the societal jolts that humanitarian and development work can, sometimes, provide.
The collection of qualitative data is widespread and growing in public health research, however the credibility and quality of qualitative research rests upon utilizing systematic rigor in collecting, recording, organizing, categorizing, and interpreting qualitative findings. Focusing on focus group data and individual in-depth interview data, this course introduces several approaches to the process of qualitative data analysis. Through a mixture of hands-on group work and independent work, students will apply thematic analysis or framework analysis on real qualitative data starting with developing a research question to writing a scientific manuscript of peer-review quality. Students will use qualitative data analysis software Dedoose to analyze data.