Description
This course examines how social, behavioral, historical and political factors influence public health in community, national, and global contexts. We consider how health is influenced by factors such as age, gender, culture, race/ethnicity, social class, and geography. Public Health problems and their solutions are analyzed in light of individual risk factors as well as larger structural forces, and we consider the rights of the individulal versus the welfare of the public. We examine the ways our understandings of health and wellbeing shape, and are shaped by, the health care system, our own values, and our assumptions.