Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular term. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the MyBU Student Portal for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

• SPH MC 932: Directed Research in Maternal and Child Health
  Graduate Prerequisites: SPH PH720 or instructor permission. - Directed Research provide the opportunity for students to explore a special topic of interest under the direction of a full-time SPH faculty member. Students may register for 1, 2, 3, or 4 credits. To register, students must submit a paper registration form and signed directed research proposal form. Students are placed in a section by the SPH Registrar’s Office according to the faculty member with whom they are working. Students may take no more than eight credits of directed study or directed research during their MPH education.
• SPH OM 700: Online MPH Launch
  Students are introduced to the program's learning platforms, tools, and resources to support their success in an online learning environment. Students learn the foundations of public health, including public health history, its core functions and disciplines and biological and social factors that affect health.
• SPH OM 701: Data, Determinants, and Decision-Making for Health Equity
  In this module, students learn about public health approaches for health and health equity, including social determinants of health. Students learn fundamental quantitative skills to analyze, synthesize, and apply data to inform decisions, and improve population health outcomes. Students are also introduced to different data collection methods for qualitative and quantitative analysis, population health needs assessments, techniques for budget and resource management, and strategies for effective leadership including managing conflict.
• SPH OM 702: Policy, Programs and Public Health Communication
  In this module, students learn about policymaking, and culturally and context appropriate communication and strategies to improve health in diverse populations. Students learn to design theory - and evidence-based policies, programs, and interventions. The module also covers ethics, and local and global politics in policymaking's, and how to assess health care and regulatory systems.
• SPH OM 703: Applied Methods in Population Health Science
  In this module, students develop both quantitative and qualitative research design and analysis skills to identify and address sources of health inequities. Students develop skills in epidemiologic methods, exposure assessment, and health impact assessment to apply to current challenges in climate and environmental health. The module includes techniques for data management, data visualization and translation, coding and thematic analyses.
• SPH OM 704: Public Health Policy, Advocacy, and Community Organizing
  In this module, students learn strategies to address public health challenges affecting their communities. Students learn to translate knowledge into practice by using effective communication and education strategies to integrate different perspectives, audiences, and sectors. Students develop skills in stakeholder engagement, public health advocacy, resource-mapping, coalition building, community health organizing, and policy evaluation.
• SPH OM 705: Applied Public Health Practice
  In this practice-based module, students learn to apply research public health skills in real- world settings to improve health outcomes of individuals, communities, and populations. Students gain real-world experiences in areas such as: community health needs assessments, intervention design, implementation, and cost estimation, and monitoring and evaluation of programs for impact and implementation fidelity.
• SPH OM 706: Integrative Seminar
  In this final capstone module, students demonstrate the skills and knowledge they gained throughout the program in the form of a high-quality written product. Students address the ways that structural bias and social inequities undermine health and they design strategies to communicate evidence-based findings to diverse audiences.
• SPH PH 510: Essentials of Public Health
  Students will gain an understanding of public health as a broad, collective enterprise that seeks to extend the benefits of current biomedical, environmental, social, and behavioral knowledge in ways that maximize its impact on the health status of a population. The course will provide an overview of the public health approach including epidemiology, disease surveillance, sustainable solutions, social determinants of health, and disease prevention. Through active learning, students will learn skills in identifying and addressing an ever-expanding list of health problems that call for collective action to protect, promote and improve our nation's health, primarily through preventive strategies. Specific topics will include: food safety, toxics reduction, HIV/AIDS & COVID-19, vaccines, and tobacco control and prevention. PH510 is a requirement for obtaining an undergraduate minor in public health. It is appropriate for undergraduates and others who are not in an SPH degree program. It does not carry degree credit for MPH students. Effective Fall 2020, this course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: Ethical Reasoning, Social Inquiry II, Critical Thinking.
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  • Critical Thinking
  • Ethical Reasoning
  • Social Inquiry II
• SPH PH 700: Foundations of Public Health
  Effective public health requires expertise from many disciplines, and students in public health sciences need to have a broad foundation of knowledge across these diverse disciplines in order to collaborate effectively with other health professionals. PH700 Foundations of Public Health is an online course designed to provide students with foundational knowledge in the profession and science of public health and factors related to public health. PH700 (0 credits) meets the foundational knowledge criteria (as outlined by CEPH) for all MPH and DrPH students.
• SPH PH 712: Public Health Response to Emergencies in the United States
  This course provides students with the necessary knowledge and skills to understand the public health impacts and roles during emergencies and disasters in the United States. The course will use two recent cases, 2013 Boston marathon bombing and 2009-2010 pandemic flu, to explore the persons, events, decisions, policies, and systems involved in each of the events. Students will apply emergency preparedness skills to analyze preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation operations and to communicate risk effectively. Students will consider the question that plagues governmental authorities and residents alike: ARE WE READY? In the end, students will possess a command over how the public health system can provide essential services and support healthy communities during times of emergency. This is accomplished through a combination of case studies, panel discussions, team activities, tours, and exercises.
• SPH PH 717: Quantitative Methods for Public Health
  Public health is, at its core, an evidence-based discipline. Evaluating relevant evidence to understand the distribution and determinants of disease across the population and to identify and engage in prevention activities requires the collection, analysis and communication of quantitative information. In this course, students will learn fundamental quantitative skills to evaluate data and make evidence-based decisions as a public health professional. This course will provide students with core training in the conduct and design of epidemiologic studies, basic biostatistical analyses and the use of biostatistical software, and foundational knowledge of exposure and outcome assessment.
• SPH PH 718: Leadership and Management for Public Health
  Public health professionals rarely work alone to make anything happen. Thus, the goal of this course is to develop your ability to be a change agent for public health by furthering your abilities to communicate with, engage, and organize others in the pursuit of specific projects and change efforts. While you may not immediately hold a formal leadership position, you can always "lead from where you are" and/or informally by understanding how to effectively and ethically work with others both within and beyond your particular organizational home, and manage processes to achieve specific objectives, in order to advance the health issues that you care about.
• SPH PH 719: Health Systems, Law, and Policy
  This is a course about who gets what health services, when and how. Policies and laws governing what services are available and on what terms strongly influence health status at both the individual and population levels. This course examines the Constitutional, regulatory, political and socio-economic bases for the policies that determine access, quality, cost and equity in health services and population health programs. While the focus is principally on US examples, the course is structured on the World Health Organization's framework for organizing and analyzing national health systems, covering governance, financing, delivery systems, workforce, and human and other resources. The course combines intensive individual preparation for each class using both written and video materials, interactive class presentations and hands-on individual and group projects in laboratory sessions.
• SPH PH 720: Individual, Community, and Population Health
  This course is intended to provide students with a foundation for future coursework in program design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. It assumes little prior knowledge of determinants of health, and various ways of addressing health problems. It aims to help give students an appreciation of health and the determinants of health at multiple levels in order to gain knowledge and skills necessary to work effectively to improve the health of individuals, communities, and populations.
• SPH PH 737: Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for Public Health Decision Making
  Students cannot receive credit for both SPH PH 737 and SPH EH 811. The goal of this course is to provide an introduction to geographic information systems (GIS) specifically with a focus on applications at local, national, and global levels, including demographics & disparities, infectious disease tracking, exposure assessment, community needs assessment, and health policy evaluations. The focus of PH737 is to prepare students to feel comfortable communicating with other GIS users, research spatial data, and produce high quality digital maps in an applied learning environment to support public health decision making. This course is an introductory level mapping class for a novice GIS user, applicable to all public health fields. A substantial portion of the course will be devoted to computer lab sessions. The course uses the open source software QGIS.
• SPH PH 740: Pharmaceuticals in Public Health: An Introductory Course
  Graduate Prerequisites: Recommended: EP713 and MPH core course in health policy and management - This course provides the students with an overview of the role of pharmaceuticals in public health and the basic functions of the pharmaceutical sector in terms of stakeholders,regulations, policies and evaluation. In addition the course has the objective to introduce the students to the pharmaceutical program and provide them with basic knowledge that is necessary to enter other courses. By the end of the course the students will be able to discuss the relevance of pharmaceuticals for public health, identify relevant actors in the pharmaceutical sector and their functions, to identify problems within the pharmaceutical sector that lead to inequity and inefficiencies and the proposal strategies to overcome these problems.
• SPH PH 746: Career P.R.E.P.
  Undergraduate Prerequisites: (SPHPH717 & SPHPH718 & SPHPH719 & SPHPH720) - This career development course is made up of 14 weeks, each 90 minutes long, designed to give you the tools and techniques to effectively market yourself during the job search process and advance in your career. It will also enable you to research potential career options and to manage your job searches and careers as proactively and effectively as possible. Online option is on hiatus for Fall 2023, Spring 2024, & Summer 2024.
• SPH PH 757: Chronic Disease Prevention and Management
  Chronic, non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and chronic lung disease, are a leading threat to the health of the population. In this course, students will set out to ascertain the background and significance of major chronic diseases affecting population health, and evaluate intervention efforts targeting chronic disease prevention and its long term management. Controversies in current chronic disease prevention efforts will be analyzed. Students are expected to gain skills directly relevant for the development, implementation, and evaluation of interventions directed towards chronic disease prevention and management.
• SPH PH 780: Chronic Disease: A Public Health Perspective
  This is the foundational course for the certificate in chronic and non-communicable disease (chronic/NCD). Chronic and non-communicable diseases (Chronic/NCD) are responsible for a large majority of the deaths in the United States and a rapidly rising share of deaths in low- and middle-income countries. In addition to their effect on mortality, these conditions have an enormous impact on disability, quality of life, health care costs, and lost productivity, and are also a major contributor to health disparities. The course provides students with an overview of the public health approach toward chronic/NCD across the continuum of identification of causes, implementation and evaluation of strategies for prevention, and treatment and management of disease to reduce mortality and improve quality of life. Through readings, lectures, in-class exercises, and discussions, the course highlights overarching themes in chronic and non-communicable diseases, to view these conditions through a public health framework, and to further develop their knowledge and skills in subsequent courses toward their certificate.