Social Epidemiology: Social Determinants and Population Health Methods

Catalog description

Explores how social forces affect human health and wellbeing. Social epidemiologists are concerned with determining the pathways through which social factors affect health, identifying disease-specific risk factors, and understanding how health outcomes and risk factors are arrayed across different social conditions and social systems. The following basic concepts in social epidemiology research are covered – social position, race/ethnicity and racism, income and wealth, gender, neighborhood / place / housing. Examines how social factors are associated with health outcomes and approaches to measurement of those factors. Students will pick a social factor and a health outcome of interest and work on a review of the relevant epidemiologic literature over the course of the semester.