Learning Outcome
How to frame a global health problem with a biosocial perspective.
Individual Course
Global Health Case Studies from a Biosocial Perspective
Course Length
12 weeks
3-5 hours per week
Featuring faculty from:
Harvard Medical School
Enroll as Individual
Certificate Price:
$ 225
Enroll as Individual
Certificate Price:
$ 225
Reimagine global health problems with some of the leading global health thinkers and actors through a case-based biosocial framework.
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.
The course will be delivered via edX .
Self-Guided
edX
Learning Outcome
How to use a toolkit of analytical approaches to examine global health initiatives so as to identify and implement effective interventions.
Learning Outcome
How to evaluate the ethical frameworks that have underpinned engagement within global health.
- Learn from Harvard faculty
- Do it on your own time
- Get a certificate, add it to your resume
- Be part of the Harvard Community
Faculty
Your Instructor
Salmaan Keshavjee
Associate Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard University; Director, Harvard Medical School Center for Global Health Delivery – Dubai
Dr. Keshajvee is the Director of Harvard Medical School’s Center for Global Health Delivery and Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS). He has worked extensively with Partners In Health on the treatment multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDRTB) in Tomsk, Siberia and MDRTB and HIV in Lesotho. Dr. Keshavjee has also served as the chair of the World Health Organization’s Green Light Committee Initiative for MDRTB.
Your Instructor
Arthur Kleinman
Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor, Anthropology Department, Harvard University
Dr. Kleinman is the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor in the Anthropology Department in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, a Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the Victor and William Fung Director of Harvard University’s Asia Center. Dr. Kleinman is a pioneering figure in medical anthropology and author of numerous influential works. Trained as a psychiatrist, Dr. Kleinman has devoted his life to understanding illness experience, mental health and stigma, and forms of care and caregiving globally with special focus on China.
Your Instructor
Anne E. Becker
Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Becker is the Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Becker combines clinical, ethnographic, and epidemiologic methods in her work. She has researched eating pathology, suicide, and other youth health risk behaviors in Fiji and is currently conducting a mental health research capacity building project and novel school-based youth mental health pilot intervention in central Haiti. Dr. Becker also served on the APA’s DSM-5 Eating Disorders Work Group.
Your Instructor
Paul Farmer
Kolokotrones University Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Paul Farmer was the Kolokotrones University Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, and the Co-founder of Partners In Health. Dr. Farmer began a lifelong commitment to Haiti in 1983. He wrote extensively on health and human rights and the role of social inequalities in distribution and outcome of infectious disease. In addition, Dr. Farmer developed novel, community-based treatment strategies that demonstrate the delivery of high-quality health care in resource-poor settings around the globe.
Ways to take this course
Audit or Pursue a Verified Certificate
A Verified Certificate costs $225 and provides unlimited access to full course materials, activities, tests, and forums. At the end of the course, learners who earn a passing grade can receive a certificate.
Alternatively, learners can Audit the course for free and have access to select course material, activities, tests, and forums. Please note that this track does not offer a certificate for learners who earn a passing grade.
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