Global Health

Catalog description

This course introduces global health by putting its contemporary definition, determinants, development, and direction as a field into a broad global context. The course explores the burden and distribution of global disease and mortality. Students will understand the difference between a pandemic, epidemic, and endemic disease outbreak, and the influence on global public health response. Students will examine the determinants of global health disparities and how health status is measured. Special attention will be paid throughout the course to health systems and how health policies and interventions are shaped. All of these concepts are examined in relation to wider patterns of global interdependency, highlighting how both global health disparities and global health policy responses are themselves shaped by global ties and tensions. The course will be global in coverage, but with a focus on low- and middle-income countries, the health of the poor, and health disparities.