Year I
- Semester 1
- Semester 2
- Behavioral Change Theories and Models
- Basic Principles and Methods of Epidemiology
- Biological Basis of Public Health
- Foundations of Public Health
- Public Health Law
Course description: This course provides an introduction to the role of social, cultural, psychological, and behavioral factors in determining the health of populations
Learning Outcomes: Participants will gain an understanding of the significance of social, cultural, psychological, and behavioural factors in relation to health status and well-being, learn to analyze public health problems in terms of the social, psychological, cultural, economic, and demographic factors that contribute to or protect from vulnerability to disease, disability and death, and improve their ability to apply social science theory, research, and principals to the critical analysis of the appropriateness of public health interventions.
Evaluation: exam 60%; seminar activities 40%
Number of credits: 7
Course description: The purpose of this course is to equip public health students with the concepts and principles of epidemiology, the basic scientific discipline of public health.
Learning Outcomes: In this course, the student will review the basic logic of epidemiologic studies, consider some of the basic mathematical background needed in epidemiology, find out about the ongoing collection of epidemiologic data, and consider the criteria of causality. We will study the various epidemiologic study designs from a theoretical and practical point of view. We will point out the strengths, limitations, and applications of these study designs. Also, we will address the sources of error, particularly the biases, that may invalidate epidemiologic studies.
Evaluation: exam 60%; seminar activities 40%
Number of credits: 7
Course description: This course is designed to introduce students with no or minimal formal training in biological sciences an overview of the field with an emphasis on its application to significant public health problems. The primary emphasis of this course is to provide the necessary information to individuals with diverse backgrounds so that they have a good working knowledge of biomedical sciences and how it influences our lives and shapes public health.
Learning Outcomes: The student will be able to describe the role of biomedical sciences in the ecological model of public health, will learn to understand and communicate basic biological and genetic terminologies, will learn about emerging biological technologies and how they can be applied to diagnosis and prevention of human disease, will learn to identify the political, legal, social, ethical and economic issues associated with integrating basic biology into public health, will be able to explain the use of laboratory procedures for understanding and diagnosing selected infectious diseases and genetic conditions, will be able to describe existing and proposed programs in newborn, carrier, and cancer screening, and discuss pros and cons of each program, including medical, economic, ethical, legal, social and political factors.
Evaluation: exam 60%; seminar activities 40%
Number of credits: 6
Course description: This course provides an overview of the distinguishing features of the health care system, including organization, financing, and delivery of health care services. The course covers historical, societal, political, and economic forces influencing the accessibility, cost, quality of personal and public health services. Students are exposed to major health policy issues concerned with health improvement and protection, and the financing, organization, and delivery of health care services.
Learning Outcomes: This course is guided by the following learning objectives. Students will learn how to: describe major organizational and policy components in health care system; develop discussion questions and defend their responses with respect to US health policy and organizations; conduct systematic analysis of pertinent topics related to Health Care System; present findings clearly by combining theories and available data; explain health care system problems in terms of organization, financing, and delivery; demonstrate the abilities to work individually as well as in group settings.
Evaluation: exam 50%; seminar activities 50%
Number of credits: 6
Course description: This course is focused on the use of law and policy tools to promote access to healthy living conditions as an important determinant of population health and community wellbeing.
Learning Outcomes: To introduce students to the constitutional foundations of public health measures, to explore legal theories for and against public health measures which regulate individual behaviour, to enable students to identify the many stakeholders in questions of public health law and to recognize and critique the legal arguments they employ, to explain the relationship between law and economics with respect to public health policies, in particular, how theories regarding negative externalities justify government regulation, to enable students to extrapolate legal theories and reasoning essential to careers as public health professionals, to understand the historical contexts in which various public health laws have evolved, to enable students to navigate legal research and literature for the purposes of supporting their own viewpoints related to public health, to develop confidence and competence when debating, addressing and presenting controversial public health policies.
Evaluation: exam 60%; seminar activities 40%
Number of credits: 4
- Basic Principles of Statistical Inference
- Program Development in Health Promotion
- Program Evaluation
- Social and Behavioural Aspects of Chronic Illness
- Intro to Public Health and Ageing
Course description: This course is designed to teach public health students the basic principles of biostatistics. It can be a first course in biostatistics for those students who will use the knowledge they acquire to enable them to continue learning more advanced techniques in future statistical and biostatistical course work.
Learning Outcomes: The course can also serve as the necessary base course in biostatistics for those who will go no further in acquiring advanced skills in biostatistics but who can use the knowledge they acquire to intelligently read journal articles that use biostatistical methods, interact effectively with professional biostatisticians in collaborative endeavors and understand the terminology of one of the core disciplines of public health. This course will introduce you to basic concepts of descriptive statistics; probability theory; probability distributions; estimation; hypothesis testing; non-parametric statistics; regression and correlation.
Evaluation: exam 60%; seminar activities 40%
Number of credits: 7
Course description: This course reviews various approaches to health promotion and disease prevention intervention strategies. The course is intended to be practical in nature, focusing on the logistics of intervention development and delivery and how these might vary across settings, behaviours, strategies/theories, and populations.
Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to: describe the opportunities, advantages, and disadvantages for intervention in different settings and using different strategies, identify and review existing effective health promotion interventions, identify the resources required to create and deliver an effective health promotion intervention, design and deliver interventions in a diverse group of settings understanding the advantages and disadvantages of working in each of these settings, design and deliver interventions using different strategies (e.g., electronic media), recognize the challenges associated with behaviour change, identify the factors that will facilitate long-term adoption, dissemination, and maintenance of a health promotion intervention.
Evaluation: exam 60%; seminar activities 40%
Number of credits: 7
Course description: The course examines the concepts, tools, data collection and analysis methods, and designs used to evaluate health promotion programs. The goal of the course is to enable students to conduct competent and interesting evaluations of health-related programs.
Learning Outcomes: Students who complete this course will be able to: understand evaluation research and the academic literature it generates, conduct project evaluations on their own and in collaboration with other individuals and organizations, know how to design an evaluation including questionnaire construction, sampling frames, data collection, data management and analysis, understand the relationship between evaluation and program development and modification.
Evaluation: exam 60%; seminar activities 40%
Number of credits: 7
More info soon.
Year II
- Semester 1
- Semester 2
- Community Based Public Health
- Introduction to Environmental Health
- Maternal and Child Health
- Comparative Health Systems
- Health Disparities and Vulnerable Populations
Course description: This course provides an introduction the utilization of appropriate methods for interacting sensitively, effectively, and professionally with persons from diverse cultural, socioeconomic, educational, racial, ethnic, and professional backgrounds, and persons of all ages and lifestyle preferences.
Learning Outcomes: Participants will gain an understanding of the significance of the role of cultural, social, and behavioural factors in determining the delivery of community-based public health.
Evaluation: exam 60%; seminar activities 40%
Course description: This course is designed to provide you an overview of the key areas of environmental health and to prepare you to succeed in more advanced topic area courses offered through the MPH.
Learning Outcomes: Students who complete this course will be able to: discuss the history and definition of environmental health; discuss the association between population growth and dissemination of environmental pollutants; describe methods used in toxicology, epidemiology and risk assessment to evaluate environmental exposures and hazards; describe policies that have been developed to manage health risks associated with exposures to environmental hazards; identify chemical, physical, microbial and nano-agents that originate in the environment and can impact human health; describe specific applications of environmental health concepts to fields such as water quality, food safety, occupational health and injury control; and demonstrate the identification, retrieval and synthesis of peer-reviewed scientific literature.
Evaluation: exam 60%; seminar activities 40%
Number of credits: 6
Course description: This class aims to familiarize students with the main concepts of maternal and child health, and equip them with skills to explain the mechanisms through which maternal and child health and illness are co-determined by biological, psychological, social and behavioral factors. The class covers current health problems affecting women and children health in developed and developing countries, highlighting the common health problems at different stages of the life cycle. Health disparities in maternal and child health and the health of children with special needs are also discussed. Finally, the role of different national and international organizations and the impact of policy in program planning, monitoring and assessment are explored.
Evaluation: Evaluation is based on pop quizzes, case-study presentations, and an individual written examination.
Number of credits: 6
Course description: The course examines health care delivery systems internationally and explores contemporary issues affecting the institutions that provide health care and the people who seek health services. The course will cover the historical development of international health care systems, the organization and financing of systems of care, and the policy process and priority setting.
Learning Outcomes: The student will be able to: understand major trends in the international history of medicine and public health and relate them to current events nationally and internationally, identify the major determinants of health in developing and developed countries and the relative contributions of various health systems and services, describe the components of health care delivery systems and how the components work together, or fail to work together, to address population health issues, discuss the similarities and differences across countries in organizing, financing, managing and delivering health services to meet the health needs of their people, gather reliable and comparable health and health care quality data at national and international levels.
Evaluation: exam 60%; seminar activities 40%
Number of credits: 4
Course description: This course aims at exploring the concepts of health disparities and vulnerable populations in relation to factors such as social socio-economic status, gender, age, ethnicity, race, stress, employment status, and the living environment. Several theoretical models and frameworks will be used to investigate and discuss empirical data on health disparities, as well as strategies to mitigate their impact and promote health equity.
Learning Outcomes: By the end of the course, students will be able to:
- Understand the array of factors that interact and contribute to the creation and exacerbation of health disparities among vulnerable groups
- Identify previous efforts to reduce health disparities along with their strengths and weaknesses
- Identify and describe health disparities in a specific population and
- Develop an evidence-based strategy to address them
- Explain the role of policies and macro-level interventions in addressing health disparities
Number of credits: 6
- Public Health Practice
- Global Health Internship
More info soon.
More info soon.
Course description: This course provides an introduction to the role of social, cultural, psychological, and behavioural factors in determining the health of populations.
Learning Outcomes: Participants will gain an understanding of the significance of social, cultural, psychological, and behavioral factors in relation to health status and well-being ,learn to analyze public health problems in terms of the social, psychological, cultural, economic, and demographic factors that contribute to or protect from vulnerability to disease, disability, and death, and improve their ability to apply social science theory, research, and principals to the critical analysis of the appropriateness of public health interventions.
Evaluation: exam 60%; seminar activities 40%
Number of credits: 7