This short video explains how climate change can lead to more extreme precipitation events and more frequent flooding. Information from the CDC has succinct information about the health downsides of extreme precipitation events, including mental health impacts.

This is a module framework. It can be viewed online or downloaded as a zip file.

As taught Autumn Semester 2010.

This resource presents a number of postgraduate courses that are offered by the Division of Epidemiology and Public Health:

Applied Epidemiology
Public Health
Public Health (International Health)

It covers the work Masters students need to undertake in the modules that, first, cover the development of a protocol and project (A34574) and, secondly, the assessment of the dissertation (A34575).

For Diploma students following the Diploma in Public Health or Diploma in Applied Epidemiology the information covers the development of a protocol and a literature review or short epidemiological study (A34562 or A34580 respectively).

Module Code: A34574 (Protocol for Masters students - 10 credits)

Module Code: A34575 (Dissertation for Masters students - 60 credits)

Module Code: A34562 (Planning a protocol and reviewing literature for Diploma students - 20 credits)

Module Code: A34580 (Protocol and Epidemiological Study for Diploma Students - 20 credits)

Suitable for study at: Postgraduate level

Dr Heather Roberts and Professor Sarah Lewis, Division of Epidemiology and Public Health

Professor Lewis: My expertise is in medical statistics and epidemiology. Areas of research interest include the aetiology of asthma and allergy (effects of early life factors, indoor and outdoor pollution, and diet upon these conditions), tobacco research (impact of environmental tobacco smoke on respiratory disease and in utero effects on birthweight and gestation, design of cessation interventions for specific groups including teenagers, economically disadvantaged, pregnant women), and design and analysis of clinical trials (multi-centre trials of IV antibiotics in CF and NRT in hospital in-patients, cluster randomised trial of pr-active approach to providing smoking cessation support).

Dr Roberts: My interests are wide-ranging but rooted in my interests in inequalities in health and increasing public health capacity and capability in developing countries. I have taught on and now lead, the Masters in Public Health during which time I have supervised many projects based on local and international student interests. I enjoy taking students’ ideas and working them up, through to a complete investigation. The Student Handbook is based on our collective experience of what students need to know to complete successful project work.

Provides training for students with an interest in clinical and translational research in the health care setting. Cultivates skills for study design, research literature review, ethics, responsible conduct of research, and cultural competence while emphasizing professionalism and personal responsibility.

This course prrovides direct opportunities for Public Health majors to observe and participate in public health activities and/or research; and to cultivate skills for verbal and written communication of contemporary public health topics for an integrative culminating experience.

Introduces the major concepts and principles of public health and the determinants of health status in communities. Emphasizes the ecological model that focuses on the linkages and relationships among multiple natural and social determinants affecting health. Course may be offered online.

Student participatory course practicing initiation, planning, and coordination of various speakers on the subject of Disparities in Health Care. Topics in this course include: mental health, Health Care financing, religion and spirituality in health, immigration and medical care, women's health, geriatrics, and prison health.

Introducing public health ethics poses two special challenges. First, it is a relatively new field that combines public health and practical ethics. Its unfamiliarity requires considerable explanation, yet its scope and emergent qualities make delineation difficult. Moreover, while the early development of public health ethics occurred in a western context, its reach, like public health itself, has become global. A second challenge, then, is to articulate an approach specific enough to provide clear guidance yet sufficiently flexible and encompassing to adapt to global contexts. Broadly speaking, public health ethics helps guide practical decisions affecting population or community health based on scientific evidence and in accordance with accepted values and standards of right and wrong. In these ways, public health ethics builds on its parent disciplines of public health and ethics. This dual inheritance plays out in the definition the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers of public health ethics: “A systematic process to clarify, prioritize, and justify possible courses of public health action based on ethical principles, values and beliefs of stakeholders, and scientific and other information” (CDC 2011). Public health ethics shares with other fields of practical and professional ethics both the general theories of ethics and a common store of ethical principles, values, and beliefs. It differs from these other fields largely in the nature of challenges that public health officials typically encounter and in the ethical frameworks it employs to address these challenges. Frameworks provide methodical approaches or procedures that tailor general ethical theories, principles, values, and beliefs to the specific ethical challenges that arise in a particular field. Although no framework is definitive, many are useful, and some are especially effective in particular contexts. This chapter will conclude by setting forth a straightforward, stepwise ethics framework that provides a tool for analyzing the cases in this volume and, more importantly, one that public health practitioners have found useful in a range of contexts. For a public health practitioner, knowing how to employ an ethics framework to address a range of ethical challenges in public health—a know-how that depends on practice—is the ultimate take-home message.

This unit provides a discussion of public health origins and history, the differentiation from private health, and the significant value provided by public health. It also reviews important terminology and includes an examination of the general organization of public health agencies and the flow of data within public health.

This introductory unit covers definitions of terms used in the component, with an emphasis on paradigm shifts in healthcare, including the transition from physician-centric to patient-centric care, the transition from individual care to interdisciplinary team-based care, and the central role of technology in healthcare delivery. This unit also emphasizes the core values in US healthcare.

The Open for Antiracism (OFAR) Program – co-led by CCCOER and College of the Canyons – emerged as a response to the growing awareness of structural racism in our educational systems and the realization that adoption of open educational resources (OER) and open pedagogy could be transformative at institutions seeking to improve. The program is designed to give participants a workshop experience where they can better understand anti-racist teaching and how the use of OER and open pedagogy can empower them to involve students in the co-creation of an anti-racist classroom. The capstone project involves developing an action plan for incorporating OER and open pedagogy into a course being taught in the spring semester. OFAR participants are invited to remix this template to design and share their projects and plans for moving this work forward. 

This course provides an overview of public health administration and the public health system. Topics included will be historical perspectives, health care providers and points of service delivery, public health services and payment methodologies. Emphasis will be directed to populations with special needs, the role of technology in health care, health policy and access. A minimum grade of: C must be earned in this course.

This casebook, now in its second edition, is a collaboration of over 90 individuals with expertise and training in public health pharmacy. A total of 54 chapters are presented, covering a broad array of topics relevant to pharmacy applications of public health. These topics include, but are not limited to, cross-cultural care, health literacy and disparities, infectious disease, health promotion and disease prevention, medication safety, structural racism, advocacy/policy analysis, chronic disease, women’s health, rural health, travel medicine and more. The book is designed to allow educators/students to choose chapters of interest as they feel suited, as each chapter is independent from the others. Each chapter contains learning objectives and an introduction to the topic, followed by a case and questions. The chapter closes with commentary from the authors and patient-oriented considerations for the topic at hand.

Who keeps telling smokers they can’t quit without help?
For decades there have been far more ex-smokers than smokers, and an estimated 75% of smokers quit without drugs or professional help.
But smoking cessation is a global phenomenon serviced by multibillion-dollar industries, including the pharmaceutical and e-cigarette sectors and health professionals. These industries try to denigrate unassisted cessation and promote their products and services – “weapons of mass distraction” – as essential to successful quitting.
This contributes to the medicalisation of a process that, before these products were available, had a natural history where drugs and expertise were absent, yet millions of people around the world still quit.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Trendy health foods are taking off in the United States, but one new trend may do more harm than good. Unpasteurized, or “raw,” milk is purported to have probiotic health benefits. Unfortunately, despite the proposed benefits, contamination with pathogenic bacteria has occurred. and little is known about the extent of antibiotic-resistant microbes present in raw milk sold at retail stores. A new study evaluated the microbiomes of cow's milk samples using DNA sequencing and metagenomics. including over 2,000 retail milk samples from 5 states – both raw milk and milk pasteurized in different ways. Raw milk samples had the highest prevalence of viable bacteria, with Pseudomonadaceae dominating. Probiotic lactic acid bacteria levels were limited in raw milk, and storage outside of a refrigerator dramatically increased bacterial populations expressing antibiotic-resistance genes..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

A Review of Open Education Resources for Program Evaluation at the Undergraduate Level

This role-playing activity allows students to learn more about the six general ways Americans respond to climate change and engage in conversations while embodying these groups. Students will be able to describe the different ways Americans respond to climate change and develop arguments to support their claims.

This course will thoroughly educate the successful student with the knowledge and skills necessary to be a certified beginning SCUBA diver. The prerequisite for the course is passing the MIT SCUBA swim test and demonstrating a “comfort level” in the water. At the end of the class, students will attempt to pass the certification exam to become certified divers. The class is taught in two parts each week: a classroom session and a pool session. The classroom sessions along with the reading material will provide the student with the knowledge necessary to pass the written exam. At the pool, the water skills are taught in progressions that build on the previous skills, making the difficult skills seem easy.

This video adapted from Bullfrog Films examines the effects of global warming on the Pacific island of Samoa with testimonials from an expert in both western science knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge. Background essay and discussion questions are included.

Student teams practice water quality analysis through turbidity measurement and coliform bacteria counts. They use information about water treatment processes to design prototype small-scale water treatment systems and test the influent (incoming) and effluent (outgoing) water to assess how well their prototypes produce safe water to prevent water-borne illnesses.