Fall 2018 Courses

Below is the full list of courses offered by the Department of Environmental and Global Health. Click here to view or download the full schedule for EGH Fall 2018 Courses.

PHC 6764 Global Public Health and Development I

This health and development course was created initially for the Master’s in Development Practice (MDP) program. However, it is appropriate for graduate students interested in an introduction to the interaction between environmental, economic, and social processes with global public health threats.

This course will cover fundamental public health and anthropologic principles, methods, and study designs. Case studies will be used to demonstrate how development practitioners can incorporate the use of these methods to investigate patterns of disease, patterns of culture, risk factors, broad causes, and the need for integrated interventions to reduce the risk of disease and death. The case studies will also illustrate major global health challenges, such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, and maternal and child morbidity and mortality.

PHC 6937 Public Health Virology

Virology, the branch of science dealing with the study of viruses, is a dynamic field, constantly changing and growing. This course deals with aspects of virology relevant to public health. Students will learn the basics of animal virology: what is a virus, and about virus genomes and structure, the infectious cycle, different types of infections, transformation, vaccines, and gain knowledge of many of the viruses of public health importance worldwide.

Classroom sessions will consist of lectures, and there will be assigned readings. Students will be graded based on class participation, their performance in exams, and written assignments.

PHC 6313 Environmental Health Concepts in Public Health

This course is a survey of major topic areas of Environmental Health. It will examine sources, routes, media, and health outcomes associated with biological, chemical and physical agents in the environment. It will cover how these agents affect disease, water, and air quality, food safety, and land resources in the community and occupational settings. The course will introduce the students to the economic context and to the current legal framework (U.S. federal) associated with environmental health issues and public health.

This course is also available to undergraduate students with the course code PHC 4320.

PHC 6512 Environmental Management of Vector-borne Diseases

Globally, vector borne diseases cause millions of deaths especially among vulnerable groups and contribute to crippling chronic illnesses among adults particularly in developing countries. Mosquitoes contribute substantially to the transmission of several of these diseases including West Nile fever, Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever, Malaria, Chikungunya and others. As the threat of these vector borne diseases increases along with the growing concern about chemical insecticides that are harmful to the environment, the use of environmentally sound methods for controlling these disease vectors strongly advocated.

As such, there is a strong need for expert public health personnel with the knowledge and management skills to execute environmentally safe methods for the control of these vector borne diseases. This course provides an opportunity for students to increase their skill sets in vector-borne disease management and to increase the number of public health professionals with the expertise needed by local, state and federal governments and other agencies involved in vector borne diseases around the world. This course is open to graduate students in MPH, MS, DVM, PhD programs and may be considered an essential training for practitioners of vector borne disease control programs.

PHC 6937 Environmental Toxicology

This course is intended to introduce applications of environmental toxicology in the context of public health. Toxicology is the science that deals with the health effects that can result from exposure to chemical, biological, and physical agents in the environment. Course materials focus on the fate of chemicals in our environment, routes of exposure and measures taken to decrease these exposures, and approaches that are commonly used by public health officials when dealing with toxicants. The role of public health is reinforced throughout the course with the goal of educating students on problem-solving and decision-making required of public health practitioners.

This course will be delivered in an on-campus/online hybrid format. Lectures, presentations, and discussions will be live in the classroom for on-campus students and online students will have the option to be present during in-class activities via video conference software or to watch the recorded lectures at a later time. Online students will be required to video conference during some regularly scheduled course meetings for peer presentations and discussions. The number of synchronous meetings will be dependent on the number of students in the course but is expected to be half of the class meetings or less. The course is scheduled in the late afternoon/evening to try to accommodate the schedules of online students that work during the day.

PHC 6937 Sustainability and Health Equity in the Built Environment

This class explores intersecting systems that make up the built environment and which positively and negatively impact human health across multiple scales (urban, regional, and global). Students will explore system layers (transportation, housing, education, social environment, safety, physical environment, income and wealth, employment, and health systems and services) to broaden understandings of structural inequalities and the socioeconomic and political drivers that adversely impact human health across the world. We will grapple with poor health outcomes along the continuum from infectious and chronic diseases to mental health to better understand what role the built environment plays both in disease burden and also ineffective interventions.

By the end of this course, students will be able to plan and design mutual pathways toward sustainability and health equity in a real-world scenario.