Topics in Urban Health in the United States

Catalog description

The focus of this course is on designing sustainable urban policies and programs for advancing health equity in Greater Cleveland. The course builds on recent declarations of racism as a public health crisis in Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland and ongoing work in applying system dynamics to addressing structural racism for advancing regional equity. The course introduces the use of system dynamics for understanding urban health inequities and designing sustainable social policies and programs for advancing health equity. The course will cover model structure and its relationships to prior knowledge and assumptions, measurable quantities, and ultimate use in solving problems. Application areas focus on social issues of equity in health, education, and general wellbeing emphasizing transdisciplinary integration of systems (vertically from cells to society and horizontality across systems). Model verification is discussed, along with the basic theory and practice of system dynamics. Quantitative methods are emphasized including the formulation and testing of mathematical models of feedback systems and the use of numeric data and estimation of parameters. Special attention will be given to understanding the dynamics of social and economic justice, value and ethical issues, as well as issues related to race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual orientation, religion, physical or mental disability or illness, age, and national origin. Offered as PQHS 419 and MPHP 419 .