PH 201 - Foundations of Public Health

This course is designed to provide students with an overview to Public Health research. Broadly speaking, the mission of Public Health is ensuring that that people can be healthy in society. Whereas medicine is concerned with understanding individual causes and treatment of disease and illness, Public Health focuses on the community and the health of the population. This means assessing the health of the population, understanding the causes and determinants of health challenges and problems, and identifying ways to improve the health of the population. In some cases, this might mean working to help individuals gain access to existing medical services, while in other cases it might require introducing population wide interventions. What has been termed ‘New Public Health’ is a contemporary application of a broad range of evidence based, scientific, technological, and management systems implementing measures to improve the health of individuals and populations. This course is intended to provide students with an overview of the history and importance of Public Health in preventing disease and improving the health of the population, the analytic methods associated with the Public Health research, the biomedical basis of Public Health, the organization and financing of the Public Health system, the population approach to Public Health interventions, including health promotion and communication, and the importance of community based research and translation of research finding in Public Health research. This course is appropriate for graduate students from a variety of disciplines in the social and natural sciences