This course provides foundational knowledge and skills for midwifery management and support of physiologic labor and birth. Hands-on workshops with task trainers and simulation will be utilized to provide instruction and feedback on practical skills necessary for assessment and management of the laboring and birthing person.
This clinical course covers the broad scope of sexual, reproductive health and prenatal care including: the history and physical examination techniques aimed at understanding the physiologic parameters of sexual health and pregnancy and recognizing complex conditions, illness or risk for complication. This course focuses on the physical, emotional and educational needs of the person seeking midwifery care and covers a variety of clinical areas including health maintenance, screening, sexual health, family planning, preconception, pregnancy and late postpartum care.
This applied course introduces students to the epidemiology of HIV infection in resource-rich and resource-limited settings. Class sessions focus on the latest approaches to conducting surveillance of HIV and AIDS; the evolving burden of HIV infection in sub-groups, including men who have sex with men, people who inject drugs, adolescent girls and older people; the development and evaluation of prevention- and treatment-related interventions across a range of settings; and the application of epidemiologic methods to understand historical and current controversies and determine best practices. Activate participation in class discussion and exercises, homework, a group presentation and a final project will be used to evaluate student progress towards learning objectives.
Malaria imposes a profound burden on public health and inhibits economic growth. It is distributed over 90 countries accounting for an annual estimate of 400 million cases and over one million deaths, most of them in children. Pregnant women are more vulnerable to malaria, resulting in infection, miscarriages, severe anemia, maternal mortality and low birth weight. Low birth weight poses the greatest risk for neonatal death. The disease also affects non-immune immigrants, refugees and displaced populations during their movement from non-endemic to endemic areas. Resistance to anti-malarial drugs and insecticides by the Plasmodium human parasites and Anopheles vector mosquitoes respectively is widespread. This course examines the ecological and epidemiological characteristics of malaria, transmission dynamics, economic costs of malaria, available intervention strategies and the global challenge of its control.
This course focuses on the branch of epidemiology concerned with how social arrangements, processes, and interactions shape the population distribution of health and disease and produce social inequalities in health. The sub-discipline of social epidemiology has grown dramatically in the past decade and, while still evolving as an interdisciplinary enterprise, it is now an established field of etiologic inquiry, both incorporating and influencing the conventional theories, methods, and principles of epidemiology. This course will familiarize students with the key theories, concepts, methods, findings, and ongoing debates in social epidemiology. Through lectures, readings, and discussion we will review the major social determinants of health, the theories and empirical evidence with respect to how social conditions “get under the skin,” and the methodological challenges involved in measuring social phenomena and making causal inferences about the relationship between social factors and health. By the end of the course students will understand the theoretical, substantive, and methodological parameters of this growing sub-discipline of epidemiologic inquiry, and be able to evaluate both its strengths and limitations.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission. A graduate seminar designed to explore the content, process, and problems of China's political and economic reforms in comparative perspective. Please see the Courseworks site for details
The outstanding notional amount of debt instruments in the world is well over $100 trillion which makes it larger than the global equity markets. Credit, is actually what makes the world go around yet it gets much less billing and excitement than other asset classes. If you think credit is just fixed income, I have a few hedge fund managers you should meet Some of them will be our occasional guest speakers!
In recent years, a number of infections have appeared for the first time, while many others have spread rapidly to new areas; these are termed emerging infectious diseases". HIV/AIDS, SARS, the recent Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), human infections with H5N1 and H7N9 avian influenza, and a number of others are recent examples. Infectious causes have also been implicated in such chronic diseases as gastric ulcers and certain cancers. This course examines the concept of emerging infectious diseases and our current understanding of emergence. The course will consider methods for identifying and studying emerging pathogens, factors responsible for disease emergence, and methods for surveillance and intervention.
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.
Mental, neurological, and substance use (MNS) disorders are substantial drivers of the global burden of disease. The burden is particularly high in low-and-middle-income countries (LMIC) where over 80% of persons in need of MNS services go untreated. Yet for decades, attention to MNS epidemiologic research in LMIC was scarce relative to both psychiatric epidemiology studies conducted in high-income countries as well as infectious disease epidemiology studies in LMIC. Recently, however, the emerging field of global mental health has been recognized by international agencies, including the United Nations (via the Sustainable Development Goals) and the World Health Organization (via the Mental Health Action Plan) as major funding agencies, including NIH, CDC, and the UK MRC have followed suit in prioritizing global mental health research.
As the field has emerged, challenges in how to appropriately conduct public mental health research in LMIC contexts have surfaced. Such challenges require the appropriate application of epidemiologic methods in order to accurately measure and describe MNS problems in LMIC and evaluate and implement intervention approaches. Epidemiologic methods to be discussed in this course include: complex survey designs to measure MNS prevalence in humanitarian and emergency settings; validation of mental health screening tools in the absence of a gold standard criterion among culturally diverse populations; evaluation of MNS intervention effectiveness using experimental and non-experimental designs; novel methods for assessing clinical competency and intervention fidelity of lay mental health providers in LMIC; and implementation science tools, designs, and analysis approaches for translating evidence-based interventions into practice in LMIC.
The course is designed to complement Priorities in Global Mental Health (P6813), which provides a broad overview of priority issues in global mental health, and epidemiologic methods series courses (e.g., Quant Core Module / P6400, and Epidemiology II). The course is also designed to be practical in the sense that the intent is for students to learn the ‘how to’ of conducting global mental health epidemiologic studies in the field. Each lecture will apply a core epidemiologic method or concept (e.g., information and selection bias; survey, cohort, case-control, and RCT study designs; effect modification; and causal inference) to the field of global mental health. Through lectures, int
Seminar for students in the Social Determinants certificate program
Clinical skills preparation is essential before a student enters clinical practicum. A variety of skills relevant to antepartum, well woman gynecology, and intrapartum care are taught and then practiced in simulation settings and peer practice.
Life course epidemiology is the study of exposures, both physical and social, that occur during the periconceptional period, during gestation or during early childhood and adult health and disease risk. This course will examine conceptual models and identify study designs appropriate for a variety of life course research questions, as well as the limitations of these designs. Understanding the approaches to the life course, the development and evaluation of epidemiologic research designs related to the life course, and the contextual models and their relevance for the design and evaluation of research studies will be covered using a combination of lectures, case studies and small group work.
This course will argue for a broader spatial history of empire by looking at sites such as frontiers and borderlands in a theoretical and comparative perspective. The course will familiarize students to “frontier thesis” to the “spatial turn” and to the emergence of “Borderland Studies” before embarking on specific monographs highlighting borderlands scholarship in a global context. Formulations of power, race, gender, and class will be central to our comparative units of historical analysis and allow us to create conversations across area-studies boundaries within the discipline.
This course will introduce the student to the epistemology and scholarship of practice and to lifelong learning. Using the DNP Competencies in Comprehensive Care as the framework, students will analyze clinical decision-making and utilization of evidence for best clinical practices in a variety of reproductive health settings. Individual plans for guided study will be mapped for each student. Clinical review and discussion of interesting, complex cases from the practice environment will facilitate the students’ development of the knowledge base and skills essential to the role of the nurse midwife.
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?
Individual work with an adviser to develop a topic and proposal for the Ph.D. dissertation.
A review of research methods from the perspective of social work research concerns. Topics include problem formulation, research design, data-gathering techniques, measurement, and data analysis. Selected aspects of these areas encountered in social work research are intensively reviewed in terms of social work research.
Large data sets provide crucial information for monitoring the health of our nation and evaluating public health policies. The principal goal of this course is for students to develop the skills to identify, process, and analyze these data to answer a specific research or policy question. The class is an applied, hands-on course that provides an introduction to several major health data sets and guides students in processing and analyzing these data. Students will hone computer and statistical skills developed in other research methods courses. Students with also gain insight into active research projects that utilize large scale health data sets via a series of guest lectures. By accessing data that measure health variables of current importance, the class provides a foundation for developing a variety of health policy research questions.
This course examines the movement to health care quality in the US, providing students with definitions of quality and a historical perspective on quality initiatives. Primary focus of the class is on quality initiatives in the past 10 years, including efforts by the Institute of Medicine, Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, various accrediting organizations (e.g. NCQA), and employer-based initiatives such as HEDIS and Leapfrog. There will be in depth analysis of establishing and measuring the quality of health care in various organizational settings, on risk management and legal issues, and on recent efforts to link quality with pay for performance.
The current systems for the delivery of health services in the United States often fall short of addressing the health needs of many people living in the communities they cover and in so doing contribute to health status disparities. The objective of this course is to help students develop a framework to understand the needs of traditionally under-served populations and the challenges facing the delivery systems that handle these groups. This course has two major foci. The first is understanding who the “vulnerable” populations are as it relates to access to needed health services and disparities in health status. The interaction between health care systems and health care disparities will be explored. Particular attention will be paid to issues surrounding poverty, literacy, immigrant health care and several vulnerable sub-populations including gay-lesbian, homeless and prison. The second focus is service delivery for individuals traditionally under-served. This component includes an examination of organizations and provider (particularly physician)-patient relationships. Students will have the opportunity to move from the classroom to the street, observing, first-hand, several hospital and community-based arrangements.
This course is intended to provide students with the legal framework governing health care administration, management and policy. Students will analyze case law, and selected statutes relevant to health care administrators, providers, and consumers of care. Students will be exposed to the evolution of laws and the ethical, practical and political impact of laws in the management of health care institutions.
An examination of the complex and evolving healthcare and insurance system from the perspective of managed health care and insurance companies, hospital systems, IPAs, physicians, employers, patients, and pharma companies. This course will focus on the interplay among these key stakeholders. There will be four guest speakers from the healthcare industry who will help the students apply their readings and discussions to real challenges.
This advanced course builds upon foundational principles of healthcare finance and shifts the analytical focus to financial management from the perspective of health insurers and managed care organizations. Students examine how financial strategies, methodologies, and quantitative analyses are applied within the health insurance industry to support premium rate development, reimbursement design, and value-based payment models.
The cpurse emphasizes the financial and operational dynamics between payers and providers, including the economic incentives, cost-containment mechanisms, and revenue optimization strategies that influence performance across both sectors.
Through applied exercises and case-based analysis, students develop a practical understanding of how payment rates are calculated, negotiated, and structured between providers and payers. Students learn the impact to contracting decisions and profitability, network configuration, care delivery incentives, and overall healthcare affordability
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 course examines one of the most significant but relatively recent developments in the healthcare market place: the trend toward increased consolidation of healthcare providers into larger practices and into vertically integrated delivery systems, as well as the parallel trend toward consolidation of health insurance companies into fewer, but much larger entities. It will draw upon economic theory, empirical research, and health policy and economic analysis to explore the implications of these developments, coupled with other emerging trends, on healthcare market competition, prices, profits, expenditures, and consumer welfare
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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 covers the broad scope of preconception, prenatal, and postnatal care including theoretical and practical knowledge for the essentially uncomplicated childbearing period. Routine care, risk assessment, and commonly encountered complications will be reviewed with a strong focus on the physiological, social, emotional, and educational components of preconception, prenatal, and postnatal care.
Strategic Planning for Health Insurance Plans is designed to provide students with a broad and deep understanding of safety-net health insurance plan operations and management. Students will have the opportunity to manage plan finances, set benefit designs, and establish actuarially sound premiums, all while operating within the constraints of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In a very abbreviated period of time, student will be completely immersed in real-world situations where they will be forced to make appropriate decisions which will either sustain or submerge the health plan. In addition to expanding their knowledge base about the health insurance industry, students will enhance their competency develop in a number of areas including analytical thinking, strategic orientation, collaboration, and communication. The 21 hours of course work will contain a blend of lectures, class work and a group project. Students will be evaluated on class participation (20%), learning reviews (quizzes (30%), and a group project (50%).
This course has two overall goals. The first is to increase your effectiveness in understanding and managing individuals and teams in health care organizations. The course’s second goal is to prepare you to effectively design organizations. Effective managers not only must lead individuals and teams: they also must ensure that their organizations are well-designed to deliver the results that their strategies promise. This entails developing knowledge and skills to analyze key issues in organizational structure, power and politics, culture, and change.
The course combines conceptual and experiential approaches. We draw on several sources of knowledge to accomplish course objectives: (1) conceptual frameworks and research findings from the social sciences; (2) case studies; (3) roles plays, videos and exercises; and (4) your own work and personal experiences. The class will be highly interactive, and active participation in discussions is expected.
The course selectively surveys ideas and frameworks from the social sciences and explores their implications for leadership and managerial practice.
This course is designed to prepare students for evaluating and treating the running athlete. This course includes an overview of foot and ankle mechanics, lower quarter strength and flexibility examination, application of the Functional Movement ScreenTM, and use of Video Analysis to identify relevant pathomechanics observed during running. Students are introduced to the clinical setting by evaluating patients in the context of a simulated running clinic, prior to participating in the student-led, Columbia RunLabTM clinic. Here they engage in clinical reason discussions and advise runners on exercise programs and improvements to running form. Students participate in training sessions required for the clinic including HIPPA and Blood-borne Pathogens training.
Over the semester, the course considers questions of Mission and Vision (What areas, activities, or business(es) should we be in?") and questions of Strategy and Operations ("How can we perform or compete effectively in this area?"). It covers both strategy formulation ("What should our strategy be?") as well as strategy implementation ("What do we need to do to make this strategy work?"). The course also addresses several additional issues that are critical to the strategic management "process" (e.g.. designing planning systems, managing contention). The course emphasizes the multiple, related requirements of the leader/manager's job: analysis, creativity, and action.
Students apply advanced strategic frameworks and concepts to real-world, complex, strategic problems involving multiple healthcare sectors, institutions, players and/or disciplines/functions. Specific objectives include: the ability to conceptualize and model a complex, multi-faceted, multi-player healthcare strategic challenge in simple language and in a coherent framework that supports analyses and resolution; a deepened understanding of the inherent complexity and interdependency of the major challenges--economic, political, strategic, and operational--facing the healthcare industry and specific sectors, institutions, and players within the industry; the ability to apply strategic analysis and other curricular concepts and tools and field work experience to complex healthcare industry/management problems; the ability to think critically about issues, perspectives, and potential strategic options, using sophisticated analytical and problem-solving tools and informed judgement to formulate recommendations for presentation to senior healthcare executives and policy-makers; : the ability to formulate a set of strategic options--addressing the multiple health industry players and interconnected challenges--for consideration;
the ability to critique a number of strategic options available to a health industry/healthcare executive team (or multiple, interconnected teams) and conclude which sets of options may be optimal given internal institutional competences and external political, policy, and economic realities
Directing a public health non-profit requires knowledge of a variety of diverse content as well as organizational skills. This class will focus on leadership, facilitating change, human resources, strategic planning, grantwriting/fund-raising and assessing program effectiveness that public health professionals working as managers encounter on a regular basis. Students will have the opportunity to develop strategies for responding to daily management situations. The goal of the class will be to provide students an experience that will directly translate to working in public health organizations.
In recent years, entrepreneurship has gained enormous popularity, even becoming accepted as a means to address pressing social and environmental issues. A significant percentage of our economy is now based on small businesses, and an entrepreneurial career is more likely and possible than ever before. Even in a more traditional corporate career, entrepreneurial skills can serve a manager well as companies that see out new opportunities. The benefits of entrepreneurship are abundant: the creativity to grow and manager your own business, the freedom of time, the potential to accumulate significant wealth and the possibility of making the world a better place. How does it happen? How can we take an idea and a blank piece of paper and transform them into an operating business with customers, cash flow and profits?
This course will break the process into discernible steps and skills. It will teach skills in opportunity identification and evaluation as well as an understanding of the steps and competencies required to launch a new business. The focus will be on scalable businesses that are large enough to attract professional investors.
Utilizing a background in basic physical assessment, advanced practice nursing students apply the didactic content introduced in N8786 to this clinical practicum. Advanced physical assessment skills and the identification of abnormalities in the physical exam and appropriate documentation are emphasized with a focus on the ability to integrate systems appropriately. The complete pelvic exam is included. As well as complete male genital exam.
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.
This course will introduce the student to the epistemology and scholarship of practice and to lifelong learning. Using the DNP Competencies in Comprehensive Care as the framework, students will analyze clinical decision-making and utilization of evidence for best clinical practices in a variety of mental health settings. Individual plans for guided study will be mapped for each student. Clinical review and discussion of interesting, complex cases from the practice environment will facilitate the students’ development of the knowledge base and skills essential to the role of the psychiatric nurse practitioner.
“Money, Politics & Law: Public Health and Abortion Policy” is a deep dive into health policy, health care finance, federalism, and regulatory and enforcement protocols through the unique lens of abortion. Public funding limitations, private insurance coverage restrictions and provider supply constraints are perpetually debated in health policy but remain critical leverage points influencing abortion care. With access alternately protected and eroded by courts, legislatures and regulators nationwide, abortion remains the single most controversial health care service in the United States. Although generally safe when performed legally and cost-effective relative to pregnancies carried to term, the future of abortion appears uncertain. Using abortion as a case study, students conduct a multi-disciplinary examination of legislative, executive and judicial branches of government in action.
In each of seven sessions, students will scrutinize facets health law and policy- from landscape view to microscopic dissection- to understand how abortion both mimics and is marginalized relative to other health care services. The course begins by exploring patterns of payment for abortion, selected abortion jurisprudence, federal statutes, key state laws and the regulatory frameworks affecting funding for abortion. How much does abortion cost? Who pays for it and how? Students focus on public financing limitations including the Hyde Amendment, Harris v. McRae and its state level progeny; private insurance coverage and coverage bans including the Affordable Care Act and implementing regulations; noninsurance based funding mechanisms for abortion services including out-of-pocket contributions, borrowed money, sliding scale negotiations, structured funds and philanthropy. Complex issues influencing the abortion provider supply including medical malpractice insurance, laws governing provision of care by non-physicians, and provider training pipelines are explored. This cutting edge health policy case study concludes by contextualizing US abortion policies among developed nations and examining abortion-related restrictions on US foreign funding.
This course provides an advanced, critical analysis of the delivery and payment of healthcare services in the U.S. with a specific focus on actions innovative healthcare providers and health insurers are
taking to improve the quality of patient care, manage the escalating costs of providing such care, and enhance business performance. It will analyze the attractiveness and feasibility of new approaches to address the challenges facing providers, payers and patients operating in an inefficient, misaligned, and fragmented healthcare system. Particular focus will be given to the impact of the 2009 HITECH Act as well as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010. There will be guest lectures by a variety of major leaders in healthcare business and policy. The course will be useful for students interested in careers in health system management, health insurance, HCIT, healthcare consulting & banking, private equity, investment management, health policy, entrepreneurship in the healthcare services sector and pharmaceuticals, medical devices & diagnostics.
For students who wish to acquire further knowledge and research skills in areas of special interest. Tailored to the particular needs and interests of individual students, they can take many forms - literature reviews, research projects, field experiences, other special studies, or learning experiences. The objective is to enrich the students program.
This course is designed to integrate foundation skills and strengthen the student's clinical practice in a variety of psychiatric mental health settings. The practicum is the first of two consecutive courses. Expectations of the clinical experience are direct patient contact (assessment, diagnosis, and treatment including medication management) and therapeutic interaction with staff, families, and systems. The student will develop a knowledge base and skills essential to the role of the advanced practice psychiatric nurse practitioner. Details of the practicum will be coordinated with the agency by faculty in line with courses objectives, agency objectives, and student education goals.
This course consists of two components: a computer science component and a health policy-specific component. The first component consists of lectures, homework assignments, and in-class quizzes in the Department of Computer Science, which introduce students to algorithmic problem solving and implementing solutions in Python. These lectures will include students enrolled in context sections from other parts of the University, and assume no prior experience with programming whatsoever. They will be supplemented by a weekly lab at CUMC for Mailman students, which will focus on guiding students through practical examples/applications of the methods presented in the lectures. The second component of the class is context-specific, and includes a health policy analysis project, in which students apply programming methods learned in class to a health policy problem, as well as context lectures given at CUMC in the second half of the semester. These context lectures will focus on the ever-expanding role of computing and “big data” in health policy and healthcare, and will discuss recent research on these topics. Attendance for all lectures and labs is mandatory.
With the Middle East and other regions of the world in political turmoil, and with the frequent occurrence of natural disasters and deadly epidemics, the demands on and the stakes involved with humanitarian aid in health grow steadily higher. Yet both historical and recent political and scientific controversies abound regarding how it should be planned and delivered. In this course, students will explore some of the most salient of these controversies and review concrete cases of intervention from Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East, Europe and former Soviet Union. The twin objectives of the course are to provide students with: 1) a rigorous understanding of current policies and approaches to humanitarian aid in health, and 2) the analytical tools and historical perspective to participate, as public health professionals, in the field’s renewal. The course will be provided through a mix of lectures, discussion and debates. Major international UN and NGO practitioners will be invited to participate in the debates and a United Nations Headquarters tailored site visit will be organized.
Pedagogy of Sexuality Education will provide students with the background and skills they need to design, implement and evaluate effective sexuality education interventions. The course will emphasize teaching methodology for working with groups and students will learn both theories of behavior change and techniques for influencing the key determinants that are relevant in encouraging sexual health. Further, all students will learn strategies for facilitating group learning, responding to the needs of students of various ages and developmental stages, and ways to engage parents. The course will include designing and delivering lesson plans and receiving substantive feedback from the other course participants and the instructor. The course will analyze emerging digital approaches to sexuality education and ways to translate what has been learned about effective in person sex education into digital strategies. We will also cover techniques for working effectively within tight time constraints and preventing controversy. The context in which young people are learning about sexuality as well as current dominant cultural scripts about sexuality will be examined.
This course provides extended exposure to normal physiology and pathophysiology of the cardiovascular system. Exploration of pathophysiological changes of the cardiovascular system and of evaluative techniques for identifying these changes will provide the student with knowledge critical to decision making in contemporary clinical practice. The course will cover examination, evaluation, diagnosis, prognosis, intervention, and outcomes for patients with various cardiopulmonary disorders.
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.
This is the third in a series of four courses on orthopedic physical therapy. This course emphasizes differential diagnosis, clinical decision-making, and development and implementation of a plan of care for patients demonstrating musculoskeletal dysfunction of the upper extremities.
This course applies the Patient Management Model to musculoskeletal conditions associated with the upper extremities. Examination, intervention, progression and outcome assessment of the upper extremity is linked with diagnostic imaging and conservative and surgical management. Interventions integrate joint and soft tissue manual therapy techniques with therapeutic exercise. Emphasis is placed on clinical decision-making and evidence-based practice in individuals with orthopedic conditions.
The goal of this course is for students to explore and gain a more in-depth understanding of current issues related to sexual and reproductive health. The course will examine how current trends in public health and public policy—and the historic policies, processes, and narratives from which those trends emerge—shape health access and outcomes and drive inequities among certain populations, particularly youth, LGBTQ
communities, immigrant communities and communities of color. The course will use a systems approach, pushing students to identify and analyze the relationship between issues such as welfare policy, economic inequality, maternal mortality and toxic stress and sexual and reproductive health. The class will better equip students to understand, analyze and intervene in systems of oppression and inequality in order to advance equity for all people. Some sessions will feature guest speakers from the fields of policy, public health and advocacy who will share their own experiences and perspectives on current critical issues in sexual and reproductive health.
This is a required course for all students in the Sexuality, Sexual and Reproductive Health (SSRH). The course is also open to non-Mailman students interested in exploring sexual and reproductive health issues (instructor permission required).
This course is the first of a two-part series that applies the Patient Management Model to adults with neuromuscular conditions. Diagnosis emphasized are acquired brain injury disorders, stroke, and traumatic brain injury. Examination, intervention, progression and outcome assessment for stroke and TBI disorders are linked with diagnostic imaging and management via medical and surgical methods. Emphasis is placed on clinical decision-making and evidenced-based practice in individuals with neurological conditions.
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.
How do we prepare for and respond to communicable disease outbreaks in low-resource settings? How are diseases transmitted, and how do we prevent, detect, and control the major communicable diseases encountered by populations in low-resource health care settings? How are governments, the UN, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) responding to disease prevention, mitigation, and control? How do we study what has worked to control disease outbreaks and what has not during situations of war, civil strife, migration, and mass displacement of people and in under-resourced health settings globally?
Whether caused by a natural disaster, conflict or famine, a humanitarian crisis often brings increased morbidity and mortality from direct and indirect causes, including communicable diseases. People moving into crowded communal settlements or shelters means that diseases like diarrhea and measles spread easily. Damage to sanitation facilities or a lack of clean water means rapidly transmitted water- and vectorborne diseases. Since the 1994 cholera epidemic in Goma, Zaire, the humanitarian community has improved its ability to perform operational research to detect and respond to communicable disease outbreaks where infrastructure and information are limited and come up with evidence-informed approaches to the response. Exploring the interplay of programmatic and scientific advances in humanitarian response is imperative to developing and capitalizing on the lessons learned from previous emergencies.
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, these lessons are more pertinent than ever as the global community struggles to control the spread of the virus and vaccinate populations in an efficient, equitable manner. This course focuses on familiarizing students with epidemiology, pathobiology, diagnostic methods, treatment, preventive interventions, and, especially, programmatic considerations regarding the leading infectious diseases encountered by communities, governments, and humanitarian actors in underresourced health settings. We will evaluate the effectiveness of different stakeholders, including ministries of health, international governments, and NGOs, in outbreak preparedness and response.