All students are required to take the above core courses. For track-specifc course requirements and options, please visit the track pages:

Forced Migration
Global Health
Reproductive and Family Health
Sexuality and Health

All Department course offerings and descriptions are listed below.

This course explores key issues in population and family health, and identifies core concepts and methodologies that can be used to analyze them. Core concepts include population structure and population change; fertility, mortality, migration; human development, biological mechanisms, natural history of disease processes, screening programs; and age, gender, and socioeconomic disparities in health.

Students learn to design a viable and culturally appropriate sexual and reproductive health program, in both a U.S. and developing-country context. Students develop skills in analyzing local needs and resources; articulating program goals and objectives; designing relevant programcomponents; planning program monitoring and evaluation; and raising funds. Readings, lectures, class discussions, case studies, and guest speakers. Students are required to complete short periodic assignments and develop a program proposal.

Building on reproductive health content covered in Core Concepts, Research Design and Data Collection, and Sexual and Reproductive Health Program Planning, students in this course more deeply examine seven key topics in reproductive well-being and service delivery, including contraception, abortion, STIs, maternal mortality, and pregnancy.  P6615, or equivalent background, is a prerequisite.

Structured as a speakers seminar. Each week features a guest speaker currently working in the field of sexuality, rights, ethics, or sexual health. Completion of course enables students to apply ethical and human rights perspectives to understanding sexuality and health, and in designing and critiquing sexual health promotion strategies. Grading is based upon mandatory attendance, participation, and completion of short paper.

Responding effectively to the AIDS epidemic requires a comprehensive approach through policies and programmes that address root causes including poverty, gender inequality, human rights violations, and cultural, political and individual practices. Lessons learned globally in HIV/AIDS programming are analyzed and skills enhanced to design and implement effective programmes and influence policies in response to the AIDS epidemic. Topics include basic clinical information on HIV and AIDS, trends in the epidemic, the international response, the impact of the AIDS epidemic at the population level, risk and vulnerability, HIV prevention and treatment strategies, and others.

Focuses on the major management issues in health delivery organizations and develops skills in the key functional areas of strategic planning, management control systems, marketing, cost accounting, and operations management. Attention is given to the delivery of population and family health services. Explores the strategic choices offered by the changing structure of health delivery and the managerial policies needed to execute these choices. Classes rely on the case method of instruction.

Enables students to critically examine sexual health and specific sexual health issues within a global context. The first part of the course examines sexual health as a concept the different frames of sexual health (medical, public health, feminist, human rights); the macro and micro factors that enable and/or impede sexual health and our efforts to improve sexual health in communities. The focus is particularly on key social factors including culture, gender-based norms that constrain the sexual expression and health of women and men, racism, and poverty. The second part focuses on selected sexual health issues including sexual pleasure/desire and well-being; unintended pregnancy; non-volitional sex; and stigmatization and discrimination against sexual minorities.

Providing an overview of the current health status of adolescents, both nationally and internationally, this course examines crime and victimization, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS, school failure, substance abuse, depression, and suicide. Develops students’ understanding of adolescent risk-taking behaviors. Explores adolescent physical, cognitive, moral, and emotional development in a historical and social context. Provides illustrations of the development, implementation, and evaluation of school-, community-, and hospital-based intervention programs.

Introduces students to the fundamental concepts and components of research design and familiarizes them with two modes of data collection commonly utilized in service-based research: the focus group and the quantitative survey. Students learn about study design by focusing on the development of research questions and hypotheses, issues of measurement, and types of study designs for an actual research project to be conducted through the HPFH Methods Sequence during the academic year. Students also learn the purposes, strengths, and limitations of focus groups and surveys, and become familiar with the prefield and data collection activities inherent in each, including respondent recruitment, instrument/form development, interviewer selection and training, and field management. These skills are put to use as students design an instrument, related forms and materials, and a data collection strategy for the year's service-based research project.

Focusing on organized efforts to protect women and children in situations of armed conflict and to relieve their human suffering, the course begins with an overview of the ways that modern war and violent conflicts are waged, including their impact on women and children. Reviews a range of protection and mental health interventions undertaken by relief organizations in recent crises, and asks students to reflect on the theoretical and practical aspects of these efforts in the social, political, and cultural contexts in which they were applied.

Students use SPSS-PC to analyze and interpret the data from the service-based research study that has been the focus of their previous research course. They learn to enter, edit, and clean the data, as well as to generate new, recorded, and scaled variables. They plan and implement analysis strategies based on standard statistical procedures, and interpret and write up the results of their analyses.

Through an overview of global child health issues, this course discusses diseases (both acute and chronic) to which children are susceptible, their contribution to child mortality, and the strategies available to parents, health care providers, and communities seeking to reduce childhood diseases. Although designed to help public health professionals identify common trends and patterns affecting child health worldwide, some topics highlight problems of particular concern in the United States or the developing world.

While the collection of qualitative data is widespread and growing in public health research, the credibility and quality of data analysis suffers from an absence of system and rigor in recording, organizing, categorizing and interpreting qualitative findings. Focusing in particular on observation and interview data, this course introduces a variety of approaches to qualitative data analysis, and encourages their application through hands-on group work and homework assignments. An introduction to computer assisted qualitative data analysis software (Atlas.ti ) as a means of coding and retrieving textual data is also provided.

This course explores the socio-cultural and political factors that contribute to the existence of gender-based violence and which lead to an increased occurrence of acts of gender-based violence in complex emergencies. Students will develop a practical understanding of effective interventions for preventing and responding to violence against women and girls in different phases of complex emergencies. Specifically, students learn the conceptual framework for preventing and responding to gender-based violence and the practical framework for developing gender-based violence programming. Furthermore, students review strategies for incorporating critical elements of gender-based violence programming: coordination among humanitarian agencies; evidence based programming research; and engaging communities in programming. Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to design a multi-sectoral approach to address gender-based violence in different phases of a complex emergency, and at varying levels of intervention: service delivery; capacity and institution building; and legislative/policy change.

Students thoroughly examine each component of evaluation and critically assess the foundations and assumptions upon which conclusions are based. The course concentrates primarily on quantitative methods and reliance on the use of existing (published) evaluations of public health programs (supplemented with a few ongoing evaluations) to help explore and uncover typical evaluation pitfalls in design, analysis, and interpretation. It presents methods for identifying and correcting these pitfalls. Students design an evaluation strategy appropriate to the goals and structure of a given program; recognize the strengths as well as the limitations of a program evaluation; and make realistic assessments of evaluation conclusions.

An opportunity for students to learn how maternal and child health (MCH) services provide the basis for primary care in developing countries. Identifies the priority health problems of mothers and children, and analyzes and discusses primary health care (including the UNICEF/G.O.B.I../ F.F.) interventions and barriers. Students make group multimedia presentations based on a rich reading list and evaluate each other’s performance. The instructors mentor these presentations, react to them, and present a focused summary of the main issues involved. The entire class participates at each session. In the context of an integrated primary care strategy for addressing international MCH problems, students learn the basics of organizing a presentation, teamwork, and training and evaluation according to the principles of Paulo Freire.

1.5 credits

Focus is on the public health role of water and sanitation services for those people who are displaced, impacted by war, or in settings of extreme poverty. Most classes are comprised of case studies with special emphasis on controlling enteric diseases. Participants are expected to develop the epidemiological skills needed to estimate populations, and estimate water consumption and sanitation coverage of specific populations. Basic engineering principles that promote the protection of human health are covered.

Teaches participants key principles and skills needed to design, deliver, and evaluate participatory training activities for health and family planning programs in developing countries. At the conclusion of the course, participants have practiced and are able to carry out the major steps of the training process. In addition, participants are able to place training and human resource development in the overall context of program management and discuss principles of adult learning, training for empowerment, competency-base training, and the management and logistics of training programs.

What do reproductive tourism and north-south relations, religion and fundamentalism, and constructs of gender have to do with birthrates? Women now participate in paid employment; divorce and single parenthood have escalated; and women have fewer children and at significantly later ages, often postponing childbearing until salary and career are established. These shifts have been so dramatic that most developed countries -and 20 developing ones- now have fertility rates well below the replacement level. Therefore some governments have begun to worry about declining birthrates and tried to craft policies to sustain birthrates - policies as divergent as providing incentives for births; supporting both women and men to be parents and workers simultaneously; encouraging immigration; supporting use of assisted reproductive technologies. This seminar will explore these trends and policy responses.

Examines the need for reproductive health services among war-affected populations and reviews the political, organizational, psychosocial, and practical parameters within which effective interventions may be designed and implemented.

The Refugee Issues Seminar series provides an overview of issues of which health professionals should be aware when working in forced migration settings. The seminar offers opportunities for students to meet professionals in the field and creates a forum for further discussion of ideas explored in formal coursework. Some speakers directly address health questions while others provide a framework for understanding the ethical, practical, and political issues health professionals are likely to confront in refugee settings. Recent speakers include representatives of Doctors without Borders, UNHCR, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization.

A more in-depth treatment of certain issues raised in P8687 Health consequences of forced migration. Presents and discusses qualitative and quantitative methods for establishing priorities for health-related interventions and for evaluating their impact in refugees and displaced populations. Particular emphasis is given to survey methodology and design and to the investigation of disease outbreaks. A series of case studies, progressing in difficulty, forms the nucleus of the course.

Provides an overview of the psychosocial dimensions of forced migration and highlights the needs, opportunities, and constraints to intervention. A consideration of psychological, socio-economical, and demographic parameters of aggression and forced migration and the collective impact these can have on psychological health.

Focuses on the public health consequences of complex emergencies. Does displacement, either within countries or across international borders, have an impact on rates of morbidity and mortality? If so, how are these best measured in an emergency setting? What are the major causes of disease and death in different settings? What are the principal health interventions and how can these be implemented to keep suffering to a minimum? What is the best public health approach to adopt during the emergency phase, during the stabilization period, and in the longer term? Course objective is to convey an understanding of data-based policy making in the health sector and to situate public health among the many priority interventions required to bring about successful outcomes of crisis situations. This introductory course is the cornerstone of the Program on Forced Migration and Health.

In the final fall semester of study, all students participating in the FMH Program are required to present the results of their research to their colleagues and to a group of experts. Whenever appropriate, publication in a peer-reviewed journal is strongly encouraged.

Analyzes the factors influencing the provision of an effective response to HIV/AIDS in situations of forced migration. Case studies of HIV/AIDS initiatives in forced migrant settings in Africa, Asia, and Europe are used to analyze and introduce field tools, current guidelines, and policies that determine how to implement effective programs in the various phases of an emergency.

The course will employ several case studies to analyze specific methods and skills vital to effective advocacy. We will detail specific methods of analyzing health outcomes for specific populations, (i.e. women, communities of color, residents of specific geographic regions) and attempt to understand reasons for disparities based on race and/or gender. We will analyze policies and funding formulas that may impact such outcomes and learn the sources of such policies (state, federal, or local). We will study how individuals working in different public health settings might participate in advocacy strategies to affect policy. Students will develop an understanding of effective public health advocacy and will be asked to design specific advocacy strategies based on assigned case studies. There will be an emphasis on creative solutions and organizing directly affected consumers of public health.

Explores the way that law, policy, and rights function to shape public health, with particular emphasis on the implications of this interaction for rights-based approaches in health. The first sessions introduce the principles, practices, and underlying assumptions of law, policy, and rights as categories of tools. The class then turns its attention to four issue-based modules on maternal mortality,"trafficking," HIV/AIDS, and welfare reform.

There is a resurgence of interest in the relation between migration and health, globally and here in NYC and the US. Whether migrants are able to become healthier or whether they become more at risk for illness depends on a multitude of factors. This course will examine the ways that migration and health intersect, both in general and for specific categories of migrants. Because part of the difficulty of understanding migration and health relations stems from problems in tracking health for migrants, many of whom are undocumented, forced, or otherwise not "visible" to the system, the course will also examine how we find out about migration-health relations. The course is planned as a one-semester, 3 credit courses that combines both theory and practice.