Health Sciences

This version of the European Public Health in a Globalizing World course includes an Independent Study Project (ISP) done under the direction of the instructor. The ISP is 10-12 pages and counts for 1/3 of the overall grade for the course. The course provides an overview of modern health challenges in Europe and how they are shaped by a variety of themes within stakeholders in policy, research, and practice. Such themes include developing a unified system of population health monitoring across sovereign countries; coping with population aging and rising healthcare expenditures; managing commercial and social determinants of health; supporting cross-border collaboration between national health systems; fostering learning and the exchange of expertise in social and health policy; and identifying a global role for European Public Health. The current course combines theory with practice through lectures, tutorials, and a masterclass. Lectures introduce the content and initiate discussions on topics covered by the course. In addition, the course makes use of problem-based learning (PBL), a prominent learning method widely used at Maastricht University, in which students actively engage in their own learning. Finally, the course includes an exchange of views in the form of a masterclass with a senior expert in European health policy. To facilitate a fruitful learning environment a moderate level of health-related knowledge is required. Hence, the course is directed toward students attending bachelor or master's courses in medicine, public health science, sociology, anthropology, political science, or economics.

This course explores the field of anthropology from the perspective of health systems in diverse sociocultural contexts (global North and global South, indigenous and non-indigenous societies, etc.). The first part of the course focuses on mental health, concepts of normalcy and pathology from a transcultural perspective, representations of madness, and the social and medical institutions that objectify them. The second part of the course examines the notion of the person, how the body is conceived of culturally and physically, how it ages and how it dies. The course also considers other topics such as feminist anthropological critiques of sexuality and gender, the anthropology of transmissible diseases, profound trauma, and questions of morality and culture in biomedicine and medical technology.

This course introduces students to the concept of community health and primary health care as it is delivered in Ghana.  The course provides students an opportunities to learn about diseases of public health importance and selected endemic diseases specific to Ghana as well as their epidemiology and control in Ghana.  The course looks at the emerging non-communicable diseases in Ghana such as HIV/AIDS, hypertension, and breast and cervical cancers.  Students have first-hand learning opportunities on the psychosocial and social aspects of living with HIV, class discussions, and assigned readings with presentations. Students examine the importance of sexual reproductive health with a special emphasis on the needs of adolescents. Students learn the causes, symptoms, and treatment of hypertension and examine sanitation and food security as keys to community health.  

Through an analysis of their health policies, this seminar examines the philosophical, historical, and political conceptions underlying the organization of health systems in France and the United States. It looks at the actions of governmental and local actors through decentralization or devolution; health systems and social coverage financing; the impact of political and media debates reflected in the texts, from the Social Security financing bills to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act instituting "Obamacare”; hospital governance; the management of care, technical, and organizational projects in hospitals; and the reality of daily life management and crises.

The course provides a basis and preconditions to constructively and critically reflect on the interplay between global health, the Convention of the Rights of the Child, and different international and national norm-supporting structures. The course
offers basic knowledge of the contents of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and global health, and also discusses the interplay between the Convention on the Rights of the Child and global health. The course discusses the importance of the Convention for the development of children's rights and living conditions, policies, strategies, and laws.
 

The course engages students in systematic reflection on the assumptions, concepts, and values inherent in the fields of global public health; develops participants' critical awareness and appreciation of theories and themes from applied moral philosophy related to the fields of global public health; develops students' capacity to use this awareness to analyze the nature and values of health/public health-related practice and the policy context shaping it; and develops participants' awareness of the contribution of bioethics to the health-care arena.

The International Internship course develops vital business skills employers are actively seeking in job candidates. This course is comprised of two parts: an internship, and a hybrid academic seminar. Students are placed in an internship within a sector related to their professional ambitions. The hybrid academic seminar, conducted both online and in-person, analyzes and evaluates the workplace culture and the daily working environment students experience. The course is divided into eight career readiness competency modules as set out by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), which guide the course’s learning objectives. During the academic seminar, students reflect weekly on their internship experience within the context of their host culture by comparing and contrasting their experiences with their global internship placement with that of their home culture. Students reflect on their experiences in their internship, the role they have played in the evolution of their experience in their internship placement, and the experiences of their peers in their internship placements. Students develop a greater awareness of their strengths relative to the career readiness competencies, the subtleties and complexities of integrating into a cross-cultural work environment, and how to build and maintain a career search portfolio.

This course examines the genetic and physiopathological bases of monogenic diseases due to occasional mutations, dynamic mutations, and large reordering of the genetic material. Other topics include: genomic, chromosomal, and imprinting diseases; multifactorial diseases; pathologies of the mitochondrial genome.