History of Public Health

Catalog description

As we grapple with an ongoing public health crisis, its important to remember that we’ve been here before. In this class, we explore how the health of populations became a source of public concern. And we ask, when, why, and how did governments accept the provision of health as a legitimate function of the state? How did disease-control efforts of previous eras help shape contemporary responses to the Covid? From the Black Death to the Covid-19 pandemic, this course explores the development of the field of public health and introduces students to the ways this discipline differs from other forms of medicine practice.