Public Health Core

• 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.
• SPH PH 781: TOPICS IN BST
  TOPICS IN BST
• SPH PH 782: TOPICS IN CHS
  TOPICS IN CHS
• SPH PH 783: Topics in EH: Local and Global Public Health Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic
  This course provides a high-level overview of how the COVID-19 pandemic has and is affecting global and domestic health and changing civilization. It is co-taught by faculty from the BU Schools of Public Health and Medicine and other professionals actively confronting the COVID-19 pandemic on the frontlines. Initial sessions provide students with background on the emergence and natural history of SARS-CoV-2, epidemiologic and clinical aspects of COVID-19, and treatment options and prevention strategies including non-pharmacological approaches and vaccines. Subsequently, sessions will examine political, social, and economic factors influencing the COVID-19 pandemic, with particular focus on the disease vulnerabilities of certain subpopulations and health disparities that have been aggravated by the disease. Future prevention and control of COVID-19 will be considered throughout the course as well as strategies to optimize preparedness and response to future respiratory diseases of pandemic potential that might subsequently emerge. This course should be of interest to MPH students across all certificates and interested undergraduates. Students will receive current information on the impact of the pandemic on health and wellbeing, and they will engage in discussions with professionals who have ongoing experience with COVID-19.
• SPH PH 784: Topics in EP: Science in a Pandemic
  The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak has put pressure on science the likes of which few epidemiologists have ever experienced. Timelines are compressed, science is under scrutiny, the integrity of scientists are being questioned, the public has mixed trust in science and science itself is confronting its own limitations. The purpose of this course is to use the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak as a case study in how scientists should react to a massive public health emergency and to identify the lessons we can learn from how we have engaged so far in response to COVID-19.
• SPH PH 785: TOPICS IN GH
  TOPICS IN GH
• SPH PH 786: Special Topics: Grant Writing Doctoral
  Grant writing is an important skill for doctoral students to develop, particularly those interested in faculty careers (also relevant to folks interested in many other roles as well!). The purpose of this course is to support BUSPH doctoral students/candidates in writing grant proposals in a systematic fashion under faculty guidance and with peer input. The fall portion will focus on general grant writing strategies, while the spring portion will focus on proposal development. Upon completion of the grant writing course, the expectation is that participants will submit their proposal for funding. The focus is on NIH/AHRQ F-series and R36-type grants, though students are welcome to use the course to prepare a grant for a foundation or other source of funding. Participants are expected to involve their dissertation committee members in decision making and receive their input throughout the grant writing process.
• SPH PH 791: Special Topics in Biostatistics: Applied Causal Inference in Health Research
  Graduate Prerequisites: BS723 or BS730 and BS852 or equivalent; or EP854; or consent of instru ctor - This is an advanced statistics and epidemiology course, focused on application of causal inference methods in medical research. Topics covered include counterfactual outcomes, causal diagrams, mediation analysis, instrumental variable, and g-methods to deal with time-varying confounding. This course includes lectures, computer instructions, and discussion of reading material.
• SPH PH 792: TOPICS IN CHS
  TOPICS IN CHS