Health Sciences

Population health and the health care system of a nation are increasingly affected by the processes of globalization. This introductory course provides an overview of the emerging field of global health. Lectures and discussions introduce the principles and goals of global health; measurement tools for global health research, and the contemporary development of global health. Invited speakers address global health theories and practices on a range of topics, such as health care delivery systems, control of communicable and non-communicable diseases, occupational health, environmental health, and the rising influences of global trade policies on health and health inequalities. This course is designed for undergraduate students majoring in global health and students in other departments who may or may not have previous exposure to public health sciences.

The brain can be better understood via the neuroimaging modalities, and its applications to medical engineering can also be enabled by neuroimaging modalities. Thus, this course is intends to provide an overview of neuroimaging systems such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); electroencephalography (EEG), and magnetoencephalography (MEG) systems and their analytical methods. 

Innovative drug research has a drug discovery and a drug development phase. In the drug discovery phase, medicinal chemists make molecules and pharmacologists test these molecules. This course challenges students to think of a medical need, to find a target, to come up with a lead, and optimize this lead towards a drug candidate. While performing this structure-based drug design project, students learn about medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, organic chemistry, biochemistry, and some computational chemistry. Concepts of organic chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology, and medicinal chemistry that form the foundation of structure-based drug design are taught in a just-in-time fashion.

This course provides an in-depth introduction to the major conceptual frameworks of social determinants of health as well as empirical research examining social factors that influence individuals’ health and illness. It also considers how social scientists, epidemiologists, public health experts, and doctors address the social causes of health, illness, death, longevity and health care; and how they use theory to understand them and make causal inferences based on observational or experimental data. 

This course examines how social and cultural background impact health access and outcomes. It discusses providing tailor-made care in a multicultural environment. Topics include: beliefs about health and disease in different cultural groups; social determinants of health; transcultural nursing; cultural competence; biomedical model vs social model; impact of sexist, racist, and lgbtq-phobic violence on individuals and communities; intersectionality.

In this course, students learn the foundations of neurobiology and neuropharmacology as it relates to stress, trauma, and mental illness. Topics include, for example, the impact of stress on epigenetics and the length of the telomeres causing early aging, the debate of whether genetic or environmental factors shape our mental health and contribute to mental illness, and the different approaches that mitigate the negative impact of stress on brain function.