Public Health (PUHE)

This course provides an introduction to the infrastructure of public health; the analytical tools employed by public health practitioners; bio-psychosocial perspectives of public health problems; health promotion/disease prevention; quality assessment in public health; and legal and ethical concerns.

This course introduces students to the emergency management profession. Topics include the history of emergency management, the identification and assessment of hazards, risk, and vulnerability, and the four phases of emergency management (mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.) Special emphasis is given to the communication function, international disaster management, and the influence of hazards including climate change and terrorism. The course concludes with a discussion on the future of emergency management.

This course explores historical and current interactions, achievements, and challenges of primary care and public health. It will analyze the impact of common medical conditions such as obesity, diabetes, mental health disorders, and others on individuals, their families, and society.

Fundamentals of biostatistics and basic methods for analysis of continuous and binary outcomes for one, two, or several groups. Includes: summarizing and displaying data; probability; statistical distributions; central limit theorem, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing; comparing means of continuous variables between two groups; comparing proportions between two groups; simple and multiple linear regression. Hands-on data analysis using software and statistical applications in public health.

This course introduces healthy behavior concepts through applications to chronic disease prevention. The focus is on smoking, dietary behaviors, and physical activity and is organized around relationships to health, measurement, influencing factors, interventions, and translation to public health practice.

This course covers the rationale for and effectiveness of policies to influence nutrition, physical activity, and substance use behavior. Policies include legalization, taxation, labeling, product manufacturing, warning labels, licensing, marketing, and counter-marketing practices and restrictions on use.

An overview of the role of qualitative research methods in public health. The course will focus on qualitative research as it relates to formative program design, community-based participatory approaches, and as a tool for amplifying voices and elucidating both complex social-ecological processes and internal individual experiences. Throughout the term, students will work in teams to design, conduct, analyze, and report a full qualitative study on a public health topic of their choosing.

This course consists of a series of practical epidemiological infectious and non-infectious disease paper- and computer-based exercises. Students will have the opportunity to apply their epidemiological and biostatistical skills to real-world situations. The course is highly interactive and challenges students' knowledge and critical thinking capacities. Students will give presentations, write a scientific abstract and press release, and develop a poster.

Topics in the field of public health can be taken twice.

This course serves as the culminating experience for the BS in public health (BSPH) majors. Students will integrate the skills and knowledge gained throughout the BSPH program and learn critical elements of public health research and practice. They will also interpret and contextualize findings from their projects completed in the first part of the series. Oral and written presentations will focus on disseminating public health information in diverse formats.

This course represents an experiential learning opportunity at a pre-approved community site.