Health Sciences

The course provides a study of health science, beginning with the historical implication and philosophy, as well as a look at the major emerging health issues.
 

Efforts to support child health, including those made by health professionals and services, humanitarian organizations, interventions, and policymakers, are often hindered by common sense or ageist assumptions about who children are and should be. This course unpacks and contrasts those assumptions with evidence from actual children in their lived contexts. Questions will include: Can and should children be responsible for their health, health management, or medications? How do children cope with and care for illness? Who should decide whether a child receives medical treatment? What do and should children know about issues like sexuality, death, and bodily functions? Should we tell a child if they are dying? What happens when health interventions forget children are people? How can health policy perpetuate or address child health inequities? What’s wrong with saying “children are resilient”? Students learn how to think about child health from four perspectives: constructionist, child-centered, critical (structural), and biosocial.

This course focuses on the history of racial health and medicine in the United States. It provides a broad overview of issues related to medical racism in the United States from the colonial period to the present. While issues of discrimination and medical experimentation are addressed extensively throughout the semester, the course also considers the question of medical research, political mobilizations, and the institutional aspects of public health.

In this course, students investigate how the brain is organized to produce actions that serve particular purposes, focusing primarily on voluntary actions. Such actions involve a motivational component, but also cognitive considerations, attention choices, and motor options. For each of these components, decisions must be made. Students explore the different parts of the brain involved in these decisions, in close collaboration with subcortical structures such as basal ganglia. The corresponding practical for this course is Neuronal Basis of Decision Making where students gain hands-on experience with and reflect critically on (a) the selection and administration of tasks that are used to measure these cognitive processes and (b) the analyses of data sets obtained by using neuroimaging techniques (like EEG). During the practical, students are provided with tests and EEG data sets and work in small groups to analyze the EEG data. Questions raised during the practical are: Which steps are needed while analyzing neuroimaging data? Do different brain states induce different decision-making behaviors? How are differences in neuroimaging data or test performance examined? Students also perform statistical analyzes on EEG data sets and write a brief report.

This course introduces the concept of global public health program development and explains how Global Citizenship Education (GCED) can serve as a critical aspect in developing public health programs and the public health workforce.

Epidemiology is the study of the patterns, causes, and effects of health and disease conditions in defined human populations. It is the cornerstone of public health, and provides evidence that impact on both personal decisions about our lives and public policy for preventing and controlling diseases in the population. This module course covers key concepts in epidemiology, including how we measure disease burden, how we study risk factors for disease, how we evaluate interventions like new vaccines and therapies, and how to critically appraise research evidence to inform public health policy.

The course introduces students to the political economy of global health. It evaluates the underlying social, political, and economic causes of ill health and the role of various policies in responding. An emphasis is placed on analyzing the role of institutions, aid flows, corporations, and macroeconomic changes in global health. The course gives students an understanding of core concepts, issues, and debates in global health. Students apply social and political science perspectives to the analysis of health problems and identify research questions and designs on global health topics. The course requires students to have completed an elementary statistics course as a prerequisite. The course is split into three parts. Part I offers an introduction to Global Health topics. The first two sessions introduce the main debates in global health: the global burden of disease project, Primary versus Selective Health Care, horizontal versus vertical health systems, Universal Health Coverage, DALYs, and the theory of epidemiological transition. The next six sessions evaluate in more specific detail the history, epidemiology, and economics of leading sources of death and disability worldwide. Part II focuses on better understanding the wider causes of ill health and potential modifying factors. It covers different methods for measuring and mapping the scale of health inequalities across countries and over time. It also reviews the ongoing debates about whether inequality is a causative factor in health outcomes. This component of the course reviews evidence on the impacts of financial crises on health, from the Great Depression through to the recent economic downturns in Europe and North America, as well as implications for health of radical populism and fascist political movements. Finally, it evaluates the roles of health and social security systems in responding to these health determinants. Part III maps key players and actors in global health. This part of the course evaluates the political economy of global health. It assesses who holds power, covering the role of the World Health Organization, Private Philanthropic Foundations and other non-state actors, International Financial Institutions, and Multi-National Corporations. It reviews debates on alternative forms of redistribution, from charity to aid to lending programs. Finally, this section evaluates the histories of engaging with commercial determinants of health and alternative regulatory systems.

This course aims to discuss the meaning of food and meals in various social situations. Based on a cultural analytical perspective, this course focuses on what and how we eat, how different products are incorporated into or excluded from daily meal practices, as well as how food habits are constantly influenced by new circumstances. The course also includes discussions on a variety of defining factors concerning food culture such as production and processes, trade and economy, migration, and housing. Based on traditions, both new and old, the cultural and social significance of food is discussed in different contexts: in everyday life and in festivities, at home, and in public. The historical development of food traditions and innovations, as well as contemporary change and possible future scenarios, are studied. A central perspective of this course is that food culture is a process that is constantly changing.

This course introduces the chemical, physical, and nutritional properties of food science. It explores food components, ingredients and techniques of food preparation, positive nutritional practices, and health promotion goals. 

This course introduces students to the changing nature of modern medicine. It offers insights into the emergence and evolution of modern medicine, its key actors and institutions, as well as discourses and practices. Health and disease are more than medical matters. They are shaped by social, cultural, political, and technological forces. Questions of health and disease are inextricably linked with questions of science, technology, modernity, religion, colonialism, capitalism, racism, globalization, humanitarianism, and the state.