Health Sciences

This course examines wicked, or complex, problems in health, including human health impacts from climate change and addressing it through perspectives from medicine and epidemiology, law and governance, and health and natural resource economics.

This course examines the rapidly emerging functional food/nutraceutical industry with an emphasis on the history, regulation, chemical basis and quality control of  healthy ingredients/products and their effects on human health. It covers concepts, history and global regulations of functional foods and nutraceuticals; classification of functional foods and nutraceuticals based on their chemical structures; unsaturated fatty acids, proteins, food pigments and dietary fibers as healthy food ingredients; health benefits of dietary phenolics, terpenes, phytosterols and sulphur-containing compounds; probiotics and prebiotics; small berries, spices, teas and herbs for health; and quality control and assurance of functional foods and nutraceuticals.

This course examines changing contours of human life including the experiences of health and illness and conceptions of life and death in relation to the development, production, and use of new or emerging technology. Moreover, looking into the entanglement of biomedical knowledge, policy, and technology in everyday life, it explores how life itself is made into an object of technological intervention. The course furthermore explores how this process, rather than simply offering solutions to given problems, also might reshape our bodily experiences of and relations with the world while engendering novel ethical and cultural problems for us to deal with. This course engages in extensive reading, contemplation, and discussion of literature in and around medical anthropology and science and technology. The format, with interactive class activities and oral and written assignments requires active participation.

Stress is a major determinant of global public health. Stress has been called a “health epidemic of the twenty-first century” by the World Health Organization and is associated with massive humanitarian, medical, and economic costs. This course introduces the basic principles of how our body's health is threatened by psychosocial stressors as diverse as daily worries, work stress, low social economic status, discrimination, and natural disasters. A major role is played by psychological factors such as perceived control, and conscious and unconscious thoughts, and emotions. The lectures cover the many ways in which the mind influences the body during stress, including the cardiovascular, hormonal and immune systems, metabolism, sleep, growth, ageing, reproduction, and sex. The course discusses stress management and recent contributions from the field of emotion regulation. Stress is not a “luxury problem” of the industrialized countries; it is also, and perhaps even more so, a leading health risk in less developed countries. Therefore, the course also explores the global relevance of stress and health. There is hardly a concept that is so ill defined in and outside science and at the same time so important for our health as stress. Not surprisingly the media are teeming with erroneous information about its effect on health. Students learn how to systematically gather information about stress and health thereby training the essential academic skill of distinguishing scientific knowledge from omnipresent unsupported claims in the rapidly accumulating information volume in the media (especially internet), and evaluating this knowledge in terms of its meaning for public health. This course requires students to have completed an introduction to psychology course as a prerequisite.

This version of the Medical Ethics course includes an Independent Study Project (ISP) done under the direction of the instructor. The minimum reading is between 20 and 25 articles from established academic periodicals/magazines. The ISP is 10-12 pages and counts for 1/3 of the overall grade for the course. This course provides students with an introductory investigation into the question of if, when, and how ethical considerations can or must play a role in the practice of the medical profession. It makes students aware of the fact that the health sciences are not operating in a moral vacuum and that a good knowledge of both older and recent ethical debates in this particular field is of the greatest significance. This course consists of three parts. The first part of the course gives an introduction to some fundamental European philosophical ideas of what it means to be a human being. This introduction is accompanied by an introduction to the most important ethical theories of the West. The second part of the course discusses a general framework of medical ethics as it could play a guiding role in the day-to-day practice of those who are members of the medical profession or related areas. The third part of the course discusses some of the most important and well-known ethical problems that can be found within the medical field. There are lectures, discussions, and the study of cases that reflect the most important problems and topics that make up the moral challenges of the medical discipline of today. 

In the first week of the semester, students are confronted with the contrasts between the “European” approach to healthcare and public health and that of the United States (before and since the reforms of 2010). This comparative approach sets the stage for identifying what is common in European approaches to healthcare and the broader promotion of health. This sets the stage for the subsequent analyses of differences among European health systems (Health Systems Module) and for understanding broader European health strategies and the EU Health Strategy itself (Health Strategies Module). Additionally, students are stimulated to consider the complexity of change processes for health. The aim of the first module is to explore the harmonization of health systems and the impact of health care reforms in Europe with special attention given to health systems in transition and second, to analyze the European challenges of cross-border care and patient mobility given by the execution of the sanction of the European Union of the free movement of goods, individuals, services, capital and payments in terms of health. Students are introduced to the European institutions and the legal basis for the EU taking up health issues. This module focuses much more on national health systems and national health systems within the context of European policy and practice. The module introduces a system approach to health in Europe. It focuses on the European differences paying special attention to Eastern European countries with health systems in transition–a special focus is on Poland. Special attention is given to theory on the organization of health services, basic health economics, and the financing of health systems in order to enhance the ability to analyze health systems in a European perspective. Cross-border care is included as an emerging field of interest from patient's points of view as well as from decision maker's point of view. The module provides the students an opportunity to analyze regional cross-border projects in order to create awareness of these challenges facing Europe now and in the near future. Organizational theory as well as theory on networking are presented as tools to analyze cross-border care and health systems in transition. Health care systems can be positioned in different domains of society, namely as systems that contribute to the dynamics of the state and the market or to the dynamics of daily life and social participation of citizens. So constructed, each system offers its own internal dynamics with distinct functions and operations which might be at conflict with the functions and operations being distinct for related systems. The interconnection of this system interplay is addressed, showing how various systems claim they operate in the interest of the citizen, yet displaying differential effects on autonomy, choice and good life of citizens. Thus, the notion of transition (or related concepts such as progress and innovation) can be identified as a social arena, in which different notions of justice and injustice in public health practices are emerging, struggling and conflicting with each other. In the Skills Training module, students are trained in bargaining and negotiating skills, and they are introduced to writing their first drafts of a curriculum vitae and a cover letter. In workshops, students learn the basics of distributive bargaining and integrative negotiation. In the six workshops students are offered practical experiences and theoretical information about the most important components involved in a negotiation process. The examples and practical exercises are based on public health professional context. In this course, one plenary lecture and six workshops around the skill of negotiation are offered. The module covers such topics as: the interdependence between the negotiators, the possibilities to claim value but also to create value for all parties involved, strategies and tactics of distributive negotiation (often distributed negotiation is also called bargaining) as well as integrative negotiation, planning and chairing negotiations, negotiating in situations in which multiple parties are involved, parties which could have a very different cultural background.

This course introduces the science of nutrition. The format consists of a series of lectures, assigned readings and assignments that cover the fundamental concepts related to basic nutrition. The course examines how to interpret dietary labels; make informed food selections for a healthy, well-balanced diet; and understand the relevant human physiological processes that transform food after the first bite. The course discusses topics including nutrition in health and human physiology, vitamins and minerals, protein, carbohydrates, dietary fats, and energy metabolism.