Courses
The Mailman School of Public Health offers several courses related to food policy and obesity prevention.
| Public Health Core Curriculum | ||||
| Course Title | Course Number | Semester Offered | Instructor | Description |
| Social, Behavioral, and Systems Approaches to Public Health | P6051 | Fall | Varies | Explores issues of health and behavior, social determinants of health, and systems thinking |
| Department of Sociomedical Sciences | ||||
| Course Title | Course Number | Semester Offered | Instructor | Description |
| Confronting Obesity: Society, Structures, and Policy | P6750 | Spring | Dr. Gretchen Van Wye |
This course will provide a broad overview of the socio-cultural factors associated with the obesity epidemic; identify promising strategies for intervention; and enable students to craft and assess multi-pronged solutions to this multi-factorial problem. |
| Chronic Disease, Urban and Community Health | P8762 | Spring | Dr. Robert Fullilove |
This course will look at a public health approach to chronic diseases (especially those strongly correlated with obesity) in which prevention rather than treatment is emphasized. We will focus heavily on social and environmental factors that affect the choices individuals make about exercise, diet, and taking advantage of preventive services that promote health and prevent disease. At the core of our efforts this semester, therefore, we will be examining the relationship between individuals, their health seeking and/or risk taking behaviors, and the manner in which their social and physical environment function as part of the problem or as the potential source of a solution. |
| Health Communication | P6775 | Fall | Dr. Renata Schiavo | This course will introduce students to the field of Health Communication theory and practice, and its key action areas. It will prepare them to design, implement and evaluate health communication interventions within a systematic, participatory, engaging, process-oriented, and multidisciplinary framework that aims at behavioral, social, and organizational results and ultimately, improved public health outcomes. |
| Contemporary Issues & Innovations in Global Health Communication | P6788 | Spring | Dr. Scott Ratzan | This course will focus on evidence-based practices in global health communication. The course will compare basic theoretical and analytical frameworks of global health communication within the context of current theoretical debates, innovation, and contemporary issues in this field and review global health communication campaigns across the following content areas: health literacy; risk communication; science, technology, & innovation; infectious & non-communicable diseases; and global health diplomacy. The course will expose students to global health communication campaigns and innovations used in a range of geographic contexts as well as give students the opportunity to engage with experts in this field. |
| Social and Economic Determinants of Health | P8745 | Spring | Dr. Mark Hatzenbuehler | Disparities in health and illness related to social and economic inequality in the U.S. Theoretical and empirical research on factors linked to class, gender, racial and ethnic differences that have been hypothesized to explain the generally poorer health and higher rates of mortality among members of socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. Concepts, theories and empirical evidence will be examined to expand our understanding of the impact of structural factors on health behavior, lifestyles and outcomes. |
| Department of Population and Family Health | ||||
| Course Title | Course Number | Semester Offered | Instructor | Description |
| Food and Nutrition in Complex Emergencies | P8648 | Fall | Dr. Joanne Csete |
Students in this course will develop the skills and tools needed to make a useful contribution to nutrition programs and/or nutritional assessment in emergency situations. Course materials are grounded in real-life situations and examples. Since food and nutrition emergencies do not happen in a vacuum, the course also deals to some degree with the larger context of the politics of under-nutrition in non-emergency situations and how the continued neglect of under-nutrition globally and in many countries poses challenges for addressing food and nutrition emergencies. |
| Public Health Aspects of Adolescent Health | P8616 | Spring | Dr. Bruce Armstrong |
Understanding the needs of young people who are neither children nor adults is critical to the development of responsive public health policies and "youth friendly" public health programs. This course provides an overview of the health status of adolescents and young adults from both a national and global perspective. This course will focus on a holistic conception of health that includes promotion of emotional, cognitive, and social wellbeing such as feeling happy; feeling hopeful about one's future; being connected to peers, school and family; having confidence about social skills; feeling academically competent and experiencing success in school. Students will explore adolescents' and young adults' sexual and reproductive health, obesity and overweight associated with physical activity & eating behaviors, interpersonal relationships (that are sometimes violent), substance use, and mental health. School dropout, involvement in juvenile and criminal justice systems, and youth unemployment will be reframed as public health issues. |
| Department of Environmental Health Sciences | ||||
| Course Title | Course Number | Semester Offered | Instructor | Description |
| Basic and Applied Nutritional Science: Emerging Global Issues | P8311 | Spring | Dr. Mary Gamble | The overarching goal of this course is to provide a framework for students to become proficient in translational aspects of nutritional science, using a case-studies approach to allow for a very broad, but also in-depth, comprehensive evaluation of a select number of major nutritional issues that are currently being heatedly debated on both local and global scales. The primary focus of the course is on engaging students in the critical appraisal of the continuum between basic research, applied research, and programs and policy decisions related to nutrition. Our case-studies will include vitamin A and pro-vitamin A carotenoids, folate and vitamin B12, and obesity. |
| Department of Epidemiology | ||||
| Course Title | Course Number | Semester Offered | Instructor | Description |
| Applying Epi Methods to Complementary and Alternative Medicine | P8486 | Spring | Dr. Heather Greenlee | This course will provide an overview of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use in the US, the public health implications of CAM use, and a discussion of epidemiology research methods that can be applied in CAM research. Research methods will include both observational studies and clinical trials. |
| Nutritional Epidemiology | P8403 | TBA |
Dr. Jeanine Genkinger Dr. Megan Hall Dr. Jeri Nieves |
The purpose of this course is for students to understand the methods involved in determining the role of nutrition in the etiology of various disease states. Examples in the literature will be used to illustrate various aspects of nutritional epidemiology including assessment of dietary intake, biochemical markers of nutritional intake, body composition and issues in analysis of nutritional data in epidemiological studies. |