Global Health Politics Policy

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Global health is a term reflects a complex series of problems, institutions, and aspirations that have arrived fairly recently to the global scene. Global health has been described as “one of the great moral movements of our time.” The complexities within the global health framework involve the work of political institutions, charismatic leaders, scientists, community mobilizers, technicians, and health workers. This upper level undergraduate course will introduce broad topics in global health at the intersection of science and technology, and in doing so will dive deep into an analysis of the various factors that influence global health outcomes. The first part of the course considers how theoretical frameworks for understanding disease emergence, convergence, and affliction among vulnerable populations. We will not only study what they are, but also what they do. The second part of the course will address how politics and policy affect health systems, financing, foreign aid, biosecurity, and humanitarianism. In all that we do, we will discuss the science behind certain theories and interventions as well as the technologies that make global health impactful. We will take a social science approach to explore the political, social, economic, and cultural complexity of health problems, and critically examine the structure and methods of global public health institutions. But we will also draw heavily on other disciplines like epidemiology and biology.