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This course provides a broad snapshot of global health, providing insight to the challenges currently facing global health equity and the broad spectrum of health practices seen across the globe. Students will explore major disease patterns, particularly in the developing world and address disparities in areas such as maternal and child health, global burden of disease, infectious disease, and political influence. In addition, they will review the design, practice, and cultural influences involved with globally identified medical systems such as Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, and Indigenous practice. Students will examine the validity and application of complementary treatment modalities focusing on mind-body, energy, and biologically based therapies.

This course will explore major concepts and theories related to health behavior. Students will investigate the theoretical constructs behind health behavior at the individual and community level, and apply those theories in a variety of health-related situations, including but not exclusive to physical activity, nutrition, sexuality, drug and alcohol behavior, and stress management. Students will examine the sociological influences on health behavior, and the ethics related to working at the individual and community level to change policy, social condition, and health behavior.

This course examines how citizens organize in order to challenge oppression, discrimination, and inequality. Through examination of historical and contemporary examples, students will learn to analyze communication strategies that communities use to create change in public opinion and/or public policy. Students will also explore the obstacles that groups may face in their advocacy.

This course will introduce key concepts in epidemiology that are used to investigate disease outbreaks. These concepts include the measures of disease frequency, principles and techniques of surveillance, outbreak investigation, measures of association used in epidemiologic studies, causal reasoning, confounding, bias, and epidemiologic study design. Due to the mathematical nature of this course, students will benefit from having a comfort level with algebra, or having completed a basic statistics course.