Community and Global Health Concentration
Global health concerns are prominent in public discourse. The HIV/AIDS epidemic, the health impact of global warming, the threat of global pandemic disease, the American health care crisis, and obesity, malnutrition, and food supply exemplify the types of urgent public health challenges that pervade the daily news and fuel policy debates. Effective solutions rely on understanding complex phenomena that play out at the level of local communities as well as on the global stage, such as the impacts of environmental degradation, war and civil unrest, immigration patterns, cultural practices, and differential access to preventive programs and treatments. The concentration in Community and Global Health provides students with an array of analytical frameworks for understanding the complexities of population health and offers opportunities to integrate and apply these frameworks within the context of course work, civic engagement, and independent research.
The Community and Global Health concentration builds on the strong ties between the liberal arts and the core concepts of public health-a diverse, multidisciplinary field unified around the examination of human and animal health at the population level. Recognizing the central importance of health within a global context, the issues, theories, and methodologies presented in this concentration educate students in critical and quantitative reasoning, writing, and integrative learning.
Community and Global Health Concentration
Structure of the Concentration
A concentration in Community and Global Health consists of six courses, a substantial civic engagement experience or advanced research project, and the 1-credit INTD 411 - Sr Seminar in Community and Global Health.
- Six courses as follows: Courses must be drawn from at least two different divisions, no more than two courses can be drawn from any one department, and at least three of the courses must be at the 200-level or above. One of these six courses must be STAT 125 - Epidemiology. With the permission of the concentration director, students may take up to two concentration courses at another institution or abroad. Students are strongly encouraged to seek the advice of a steering committee member in selecting a coherent set of courses that meet their educational goals and complement their major.
- At least one course that is primarily about ways of understanding the health of human and/or animal populations. Students are encouraged to take more than one course in this category.
ANTH 239 - Medical Anthropology
GEOG 256 - Health Geography
HIST 164 - Global Health Histories
INTL 282 - Introduction to International Public Health
PHIL 220 - Bioethics
PSYC 380 - Community Psychology and Public Health
PSYC 394 - Topics Course (Indigenous Healing and Well-Being)
POLI 205 - US Politics and Policymaking (when taught with a focus on Public Health)
- A course on the methodologies of public health
STAT 125 - Epidemiology
- Courses that provide rich examples, background knowledge or skills, or analytical frameworks that enrich the understanding of population health. Courses in this category do not necessarily focus directly on human population health. In consultation with a steering committee member, students may propose to meet their concentration objectives by taking other courses.
- Methods Courses (Please note that no more than one course from this subset can be applied to the concentration)
ECON 381 - Introduction to Econometrics
GEOG 225 - Introduction to Geographic Information Systems
GEOG 277 - Qualitative Research Methods in Geography
GEOG 378 - Statistical Research Methods in Geography
STAT 155 - Introduction to Statistical Modeling
POLI 269 - Empirical Research Methods
PSYC 201 - Research in Psychology I
SOCI 269 - Social Science Inquiry
- Courses about health (but not necessarily population health)
ANTH 241 - Anthropology of Death and Dying
ANTH 380 - Stigma and Disabilities
BIOL 112 - Health in the Anthropocene
BIOL 117 - Women, Health and Reproduction
BIOL 402 - Seminar in Virology
BIOL 357 - Immunology
BIOL 312 - Microbiology
EDUC 230 - Community Youth Development in Multicultural America
ENVI 237 - Environmental Justice
GEOG 258 - Geography of Environmental Hazards
GEOG 368 - Health GIS
GEOG 475 - Health Geography Seminar
HIST 271 - Uses and Abuses: Drugs, Addiction and Recovery
HIST 350 - Race, Gender, and Medicine
INTL 246 - Global Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health
PSYC 182 - Drugs and Society
PSYC 252 - Distress, Dysfunction, and Disorder: Perspectives on the DSM
PSYC 272 - Health Psychology
PSYC 368 - Psychology of/and Disability
STAT 451 - Causal Inference
STAT 453 - Survival Analysis
- Courses with substantial examples drawn from population health or with a sustained health focus. This subset includes courses that have broader goals but choose, for a semester, to focus those goals on population health. The steering committee will post a list of courses in this category each semester before students register for the following semester. Although the steering committee will seek to be comprehensive in exploring courses that fit within this list, we welcome input from students about courses about which we may not be aware.
- At least one course that is primarily about ways of understanding the health of human and/or animal populations. Students are encouraged to take more than one course in this category.
- A substantial project focusing on the health of human populations. Normally, this requirement will be fulfilled through A) a civic engagement experience of no less than 75 hours or B) an advanced research project resulting in a major paper. Civic engagement experiences can be arranged in organizations in the Twin Cities, in a different US location, or abroad. They can be taken for academic credit as an internship or may be a paid or unpaid volunteer position during the academic year, winter break, or summer. Such experiences must include a reflection component and site supervisor evaluations. Advanced research projects may be completed for academic credit in courses, independent studies, honors theses, or capstone programs within the student's major or may be non-credit bearing work in the summer, winter break, or the academic year conducted under the supervision of a faculty member. Projects should be selected and developed in consultation with a steering committee member as part of a coherent plan and must be approved by the Director. Criteria for evaluating whether a project may count towards this requirement will be a) the extent to which the project involves significant engagement with key issues in population health; and b) the quality of the student's work as reflected in their written work about the project and, where relevant, site supervisor evaluations. Students will present their projects in the culminating seminar (see below).
- INTD 411 - Sr Seminar in Community and Global Health. A one-credit culminating seminar, meeting weekly for one hour in the spring term, in which issues in community and global health are discussed from an interdisciplinary perspective. In addition to sponsoring lectures by notable public health professionals, the seminar will also provide opportunities for students to share the work they have done on their CGH project in a public presentation (see item 2 above). Credit for the CGH project is earned upon successful completion of the senior seminar. Typically, this seminar will be taken in the student's senior year.