380.604.41
Life Course Perspectives on Health

Location
Internet
Term
1st Term
Department
Population, Family and Reproductive Health
Credit(s)
4
Academic Year
2024 - 2025
Instruction Method
Synchronous Online
Class Time(s)
M, W, 1:30 - 3:20pm
Auditors Allowed
No
Available to Undergraduate
Yes
Grading Restriction
Letter Grade or Pass/Fail
Course Instructor(s)
Cynthia Minkovitz
Mary Elizabeth Hughes
Contact Name
Mary Elizabeth Hughes
Frequency Schedule
Every Year
Description
Teaches students to frame public health issues using a multilevel, life course perspective. Provides a conceptual framework with which to understand the development of health over time and the interrelated effects of biological, psychological, and social factors on health. Elaborates and illustrates the framework by considering health in specific life stages, highlighting multilevel, life course influences on health, processes by which social influences “get under the skin”, and multilevel, life course approaches to research and practice. Creates a conceptual framework illustrating the application of the framework to a public health outcome of the student's choice.
Learning Objectives
Upon successfully completing this course, students will be able to:
  1. Explain the concept of levels and the multilevel approach to understanding population health
  2. Explain the concept of health development and the life course approach to understanding population health
  3. Assess the advantages and challenges of applying a multilevel life course perspective in public health research and practice
  4. Identify and explain life course biological and genetic factors that affect a population’s health
  5. Identify and explain life course behavioral and psychological factors that affect a population’s health
  6. Identify and explain life course social, political, and economic determinants of population health
  7. Illustrate how societal, behavioral, and psychological factors interact with biological and genetic factors to affect population health over the life course
  8. Discuss pathways by which structural bias, social inequities and racism undermine health and create challenges to achieving health equity at organizational, community and systemic levels
  9. Create a conceptual framework that communicates a multilevel life course perspective on a specific public health outcome
Methods of Assessment
This course is evaluated as follows:
  • 25% Written Assignment(s)
  • 25% Discussion
  • 50% Project(s)
Instructor Consent
No consent required
Special Comments

Students must have instructor's permission to enroll in the class after the first week of the term. This is the virtual/online section of a course also held onsite. You are responsible for the modality in which you register

Active approval