Health outcomes for individuals and populations are impacted by a variety of social, economic and environmental factors. To understand how these social determinants create or reduce opportunities for health, it is critical to understand how both the public health and healthcare systems have been developed, have evolved and are now organized to either contribute to or reduce disparities between the outcomes of different populations. This course, the first of two Foundations courses, will cover the values, history and essential services of the US public health system and the foundations of the social and environmental determinants of health, including the impact of racism, poverty and other structural inequities. Modules will concentrate on how the public health system has addressed communicable and non-communicable diseases through progress in environmental, social and economic policies and practices, impacting health throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries and accounting for more than two-thirds of the gains in life expectancy over the past 100 plus years.
Corequisite: Enrollment in PUBHLTH 6001
