SPHG 721: Public Health Solutions: Systems, Policy and Advocacy

Credit Hours: 2

Prerequisites: SPHG 711, SPHG 712, SPHG 713

This course is completed as part of the 14-credit integrated Core public health training program completed by all MPH students in UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health.

This course will build on the knowledge you gained in SPHG 711, 712 and 713, identifying and describing public health issues. In this course, students will move from understanding and measuring health problems to conceptualizing and planning solutions for those problems. Students will explore how public health practitioners establish priorities for action, considering context and community as crucial factors that impact how practitioners conceptualize and, subsequently, plan, implement, evaluate and disseminate information about public health programs and policies. 

Students will examine strategies for addressing public health problems at each level of the social-ecological framework, from understanding health systems in the United States and globally to considering organizational-, community-, and individual-level behavioral change solutions. Students will consider the distinctions between programs and policies. 

Finally, students will look at other factors, including evaluation, sustainability and dissemination, which help us understand how and how well public health solutions have worked, how they can be scaled, and what can be learned from them in adding to the evidence base. Throughout the course, students will discuss health equity as a fundamental goal of improving population health.