Global Health Case Studies from a Biosocial Perspective

EDX

Category: Social Sciences Tags: Beginner, Course, EDX, Harvard Free Courses

Introduction

Reimagine global health problems with some of the leading global health thinkers and actors through a Global Health Case Studies based on a biosocial framework.

About this course

This introductory global health course aims to frame global health’s collection of problems and actions within a particular biosocial perspective. It develops a toolkit of interdisciplinary analytical approaches and uses them to examine historical and contemporary global health initiatives with careful attention to a critical sociology of knowledge. Four physician-anthropologists – Paul Farmer, Arthur Kleinman, Anne Becker, and Salmaan Keshavjee – draw on experience working in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Americas to investigate what the field of global health comprises, how global health problems are defined and constructed, and how global health interventions play out in both expected and unexpected ways.

The course seeks to inspire and teach the following principles:

A global awareness. This course aims to enable learners to recognize the role of distinctive traditions, governments, and histories in shaping health and well being. In addition, rather than framing a faceless mass of poor populations as the subject of global health initiatives, the course uses ethnographies and case studies to situate global health problems in relation to the lives of individuals, families, and communities.
A foundation in social and historical analysis. The course demonstrates the value of social theory and historical analysis in understanding health and illness at individual and societal levels.

An ethical engagement. Throughout the course, learners will be asked to critically evaluate the ethical frameworks that have underpinned historical and contemporary engagement in global health. Learners will be pushed to consider the moral questions of inequality and suffering as well as to critically evaluate various ethical frameworks that motivate and structure attempts to redress these inequities.

A sense of inspiration and possibility

While the overwhelming challenges of global health could all too easily engender cynicism, passivity, and helplessness, learners will observe that no matter how complex the field of global health and no matter how steep the challenges, it is possible to design, implement, and foster programs and policies that make enormous positive change in the lives of the world’s poorest and suffering people.

HarvardX requires individuals who enroll in its courses on edX to abide by the terms of the edX honor code. HarvardX will take appropriate corrective action in response to violations of the edX honor code, which may include dismissal from the HarvardX course; revocation of any certificates received for the HarvardX course; or other remedies as circumstances warrant. No refunds will be issued in the case of corrective action for such violations. Enrollees who are taking HarvardX courses as part of another program will also be governed by the academic policies of those programs.

What you will learn?

• How to frame a global health problem with a biosocial perspective.
• How to use a toolkit of analytical approaches to examine global health initiatives so as to identify and implement effective interventions.
• To evaluate the ethical frameworks that have underpinned engagement within global health.

Syllabus

Week 1. Global Health Case Studies: Introduction

• Introduction to the Course
• Introduction to the Biosocial: HIV and TB Co-infection in sub-Saharan Africa

Week 2-5. The Toolkit: Social Theories, History, and Political Economy

• Why Ideas Matter: Six Social Theories
• Colonial Medicine and Its Legacies in Global Health
• Discourses of Development and Global Health
• Neoliberalism and Its Rise in the field of Global Health

Week 6. Redefining the Possible: The Global AIDS Movement

• The Global AIDS Movement

Week 7. Global Health Case Studies:  Building an Effective Rural Health Delivery Model in Haiti and Rwanda

• TB, HIV, and Structural Violence in Haiti
• Community Healthcare Workers in Rwanda
• Healthcare systems and Ebola in Liberia

Week 8-9. Global Health Case Studies: Scaling up Effective Delivery Models Worldwide

• Building Back Better: The Success of Rwanda’s Health Care System
• Mental Health Care Capacity Building in Haiti
• The Case for Global Health Delivery
• BRAC TB Delivery Model
• Integrated Healthcare in Rwanda

Week 10. The Unique Challenges of Mental Health and MDRTB: Critical Perspectives on Metrics of Disease

• Eating Pathology, Suicide Risk, and Rapid Social Change in Fiji: Low Visibility and High Vulnerability
• Overcoming structural violence: MDR-TB care in Russia
• MDR-TB as a window into Global Health

Week 11. Global Health Case Studies:  Values and Global Health (Choose 1)

• Stigma and Mental Health
• Values, Caregiving, and Global Health

Week 12. Global Health Case Studies:  Taking Stock of Foreign Aid

• Neoliberalism and Its Penetration into the Local World: The Case of NGOs in Tajikistan

Note:

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