Professor Sue J. Goldie introduces her newest online course, SSCI E-124 Global Health Challenges: Complexities of Evidence-Based Policy, offered in Spring 2017 through the Harvard Extension School.
This course provides a broad conceptual foundation for critically thinking about population health in a global context, positioning health as a social objective that contributes to human development, human rights, and global security. We explore health conditions (for example, infectious diseases, malnutrition, and maternal-child mortality, non-communicable diseases, intentional and unintentional injuries); health determinants (social, political, and environmental conditions that influence health) operating within and beyond borders; and societal responses to health challenges (health systems, public policy, social entrepreneurship, and global governance). Health indicators, population metrics, and graphics are used to analyze the magnitude, distribution, and trends of disease patterns and population dynamics across and within countries, with particular attention to the contemporary challenges of widening inequities, forced migration, displaced populations, and rapid urbanization. Using historical and contemporary examples, we consider how knowledge is contextualized and translated to policy and action. The recorded lectures are from the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences course Societies of the World 24.