Course Descriptions

3 Credits, Fall Semester

Prerequisite: None

Designed to provide you with a graduate‐level overview of the role of the social and behavioral sciences in understanding and addressing public health problems. Three general topics are covered. First, we examine how psychological, social, and environmental factors influence people’s health and wellbeing. Second, we explore factors that influence health behavior, including individual, social, and environmental/community influences. Third, we explore how understanding behavior and social/environmental influences on health informs public health approaches to improving health and preventing disease. The course prepares public health students to satisfy MPH competencies in social and behavioral sciences.

Format: Seated and Online

2 Credits, Spring Semester

Prerequisite: None

This course provides students with the foundations needed for public health professionals to work with other health professionals, along with key qualitative analysis and cultural competence skills. This course will also provide students with communication and conflict resolution skills.

This course satisfies some of the requirements for IPCP Digital Badges #1 and #2.

Format: Online

Prerequisite: None

This course is intended to provide a basic introduction to principles and methods of epidemiology. The course emphasizes the conceptual aspects of epidemiologic investigation and application of these concepts in public health and related professions. Topics include overview of the epidemiologic approach to studying disease; the natural history of disease; measures of disease occurrence, association and risk; epidemiologic study designs; disease surveillance; population screening; interpreting epidemiologic associations; causal inference using epidemiologic information; and application of these basic concepts in the context of selected major diseases and risk factors. Please note that this course cannot be used for degrees that require EEH 501 unless pre-approved by the program director, or as a prerequisite for courses that require EEH 501.

Format: Online

Prerequisite: None

Introduction to the basic principles, methods, and uses of epidemiology. This course is a master’s/doctoral level course designed to introduce epidemiology, its methods and its role in public health. A major portion of the course will be devoted to an overview of fundamental epidemiologic methods used in public health research and practice. The student will be familiarized with basic measures used in describing disease frequency in populations. Descriptive and analytic approaches to the study of disease will be explored, and a perspective on the role of epidemiologic methods in health services planning and evaluation will be provided. Problem solving exercises will be used to provide students with an opportunity to tabulate data and apply subject matter developed during lectures and in reading assignments. At the end of the course students should have a general understanding of the uses and limitations of epidemiologic inquiry. This understanding should provide the basis for applying epidemiologic concepts in work-related settings and in other courses in the public health curriculum.

Format: seated

The course is for students in the public health sciences who seek to develop hands-on introductory data analysis skills. Students will learn basic methods for data organization and management as well as basic skills in data exploration and presentation. The course includes emphasis on the application and interpretation of commonly used introductory statistical tests in the computer laboratory using SAS software. Topics include descriptive statistics, hypothesis testing for means, proportions, elementary non-parametric techniques, t-tests, ANOVA, correlations, and linear regression.

Format: seated

Prerequisite: None

Intended for students with little or no background in the biological sciences and health professions. The course provides a broad overview of public health topics related to human health and disease focusing on disease etiology with particular emphasis on parasitic and microbial infections plus a review of the anatomy, physiology, and pathology of selected major organ systems and associated diseases of public health importance.

Format: seated

Prerequisite: None

Introduces students to the historical development, structure, operation, and current and future directions of the major components of the American health care delivery and public health systems. It examines the ways in which health care services are organized and delivered, the influences that impact health care public policy decisions, factors that determine priorities in financing health care services and the relationship of health care costs to measurable benefits. The course enables students to assess the role of organized efforts to influence health policy formulation, and the contributions of medical technology, research findings, and societal values to the evolving U.S. health care delivery system. Class time is also devoted to exploring emerging policy, ethical and legal dilemmas resulting from medical and technological advances.

Format: seated and online

Prerequisite: None

The course introduces students to fundamental management principles of budgeting and accounting used in health care organizations and assumes no prior knowledge in accounting or financial management. This course will focus on the relationship between financial management and organizational decision making in order to maximize efficiency as defined by the provision of the maximum amount of high quality care utilizing the least amount of inputs. In this course we will learn basic health care financial management and accounting terminology and how to apply financial information to organizational planning, implementation, and methods to evaluate and control costs. Managerial accounting techniques of capital and cash budgets, indirect cost allocation, and variance analysis will be reviewed as well as their relation to operating an efficient organization. Students will learn how to analyze an organization’s financial condition through balance sheets, cash flow statements, and publicly reported financial documents. We will review the workings of capital markets (bond and equity), asset valuation techniques, and financial decision-making based on pro forma analysis and lease versus buy as it relates to service expansion and debt financing. Students mastering these techniques will be able to apply them in a variety of health care settings to help the organization employing them meet mission-based and strategic and tactical objectives.

Prerequisite: None

Introductory course that explores the U.S. public policymaking process and its impacts upon the determinants of the population’s health status including environmental, socio-cultural, ethnic, demographic, economic, lifestyle, service access and other factors. The course provides an historical overview of benchmark developments in U.S. health care, highlighting significant influences that transformed the industry into its current form.  With the incremental evolution of U.S. health policy as the context, the course discusses individual and societal values concerning health and the operation of the political system. Each step of the policymaking process highlights the roles of key players in the legislative, judiciary and executive branches of government. The course identifies and characterizes health care system stakeholders ranging from private citizens to powerful industry lobbying organizations and the means and methods used to influence the formulation, implementation and modification of health policy. The course concludes with a discussion of the characteristics and role of political competence in the U.S. policymaking process.

Format: Online

Prerequisite: None

Provides the ability to apply economic reasoning to health care markets. Topics include: organization of the hospital, payment systems, costs and charges, the market for physician services, cost-effectiveness analysis, outcomes research, and health care reform.

Format: Online

Prerequisite: None

Allows students to synthesize the knowledge and skills developed during the academic portion of their program in a practical application setting. Field training experiences vary depending upon the student’s interest and concentration area; experiences need to be approved by the MPH concentration director.

Learn more about MPH Field Training.

Prerequisite: None

Introductory course that explores the role of environmental factors in health with an emphasis on characterization, assessment, and control of environmental hazards. Topics include application of toxicologic and epidemiologic methods in assessing risk and setting exposure limits; the nature of and control of hazards associated with food, water, air, solid and liquid waste, occupation, and radiation; risk communication and management, environmental justice; and environmental laws. The course concludes by examining the impact of human activity, such as energy use and pollution, on the environment and how human-induced environmental change, in turn, impacts public health and that of the planet as a whole.

Format: seated and online

Prerequisite: None

This course introduces students to public health issues from a practice-based perspective. Through presentations by public health leaders and practitioners, readings, group discussion and class activities, students practice integrating public concepts to better understand issues, and develop responses. Course content focuses on public health issues from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), American Public Health Association (APHA), World Health Organization (WHO), local and state health departments or other organizations.

This course partially satisfies the requirements for IPCP Digital Badge #1.

Format: online

Prerequisite: Permission of instructor

The purpose of the culminating projects is for MPH students to integrate core public health knowledge and skills. It will take the form of a paper prepared during the concluding semester of the student’s program.

Corequisite: Students must enroll in STA 527 LEC and STA 527 REC in the same term.

This course is designed for students concerned with medical data. The material covered includes: the design of clinical trials and epidemiological studies; data collection; summarizing and presenting data; probability; standard error; confidence intervals and significance tests; techniques of data analysis including multifactorial methods and the choice of statistical methods; problems of medical measurement and diagnosis; and vital statistics and calculation of sample size. The design and analysis of medical research studies will be illustrated. MINITAB is used to perform some data analysis. Descriptive statistics, probability distributions, estimation, tests of hypothesis, categorical data, regression model, analysis of variance, nonparametric methods, and others will be discussed as time permits.

Instructor: Kuhlmann

Format: seated and online

Prerequisite: None

Provides students with an overview of the development of management and leadership concepts within health care organizations. Delves into the strategic and policy issues challenging health care systems (access, financing, defining and quantifying quality, etc.). Provides a practical framework of the professional competencies and skills needed to be an effective administrator within a complex health care system.

Format: Online, asynchronous

Prerequisite: None

Provides an understanding of how the law serves as a tool in advancing a public health agenda. The class is interdisciplinary, including law students and students from public health-related fields. The course examines the history of public health law, the tension between state and federal governments in the regulation of the publics health, and the conflicts between governmental powers and individual autonomy. The course considers the standard practice of public health professionals to prevent disease and promote healthy behaviors in the wake of emerging public health challenges such as racial disparities in health care, a potential flu pandemic, the obesity epidemic, and the abortion debate.

Prerequisite: None

This course is designed to be an overview of the health care industry and a framing of the severe challenges facing leaders in field. It will take a business approach to the issues presented, but will always juxtapose financial issues with value creation. It begins with a short look at classic economics, and why they do not always apply in health care. It will take an in-depth look at the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and the implications it has on all parts of the industry. It will follow with a review of each component of the industry: government, health plans, employers, providers, and suppliers. Each review will focus on the unique challenges leaders are facing in a dynamic, changing environment.

Prerequisite or Corequisite: EEH 544

This course is a field training experience that serves as an elective course, and must be taken concurrent with or after a student takes the required EEH 544 field training course. This elective experience allows students to synthesize the knowledge and skills developed during the academic portion of their program in a practical application setting. Field training experiences vary depending upon the student’s interest and concentration area; experiences need to be approved by the MPH concentration director.