Political Economy of Public Health

Course Objectives

Students will be able to:

1. Articulate the difference between top-down and bottom-up approaches to public health practice and why both approaches are necessary.
2. Explain the obstacles that impede success in community engagement for public health and how to overcome them.
3. Describe ways to make community-engaged public health practice routine inside the constraints of health systems dominated by curative services.
4. Identify best practices in coalition-building in a community around improvements in public health.
5. Evaluate prospects for community building as a standard approach to PH.
6. Explain the difference between versions of rescue that dehumanize and versions that humanize.
7. Identify modes of public health that oppress those they are meant to help.
8. Appraise the pros and cons of interventions and programs as the currency of PH.
9. Describe Unintended Negative Consequences of Programs, Campaigns, and Top-Down Life Saving (Millions at a Time).

Reading List

(2011, June). CDC Principles of Community Engagement (2nd Edition). Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved from: https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/communityengagement/pdf/PCE_Report_508_FINAL.pdf Bishai, Kuan, Shah, Geiss, Thompson. (2019). The art of convening: A Baltimore case study of Communities of Change. Creative Commons License. Retrieved from: http://jhsphocw.s3.amazonaws.com/PDF/Beta%20C4C%20Case%20Study.docx.pdf Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Bloomsbury Publishing. Hofrichter, Richard, and Rajiv Bhatia. "Tackling health inequities through public health practice." Washington: National Association of County and City Health Officials and Ingham County Health Department. Retrieved January 14 (2006): 2010. Hunter, D. (2015). Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow. Denver, CO: Veterans of Hope. Kania, John, and Mark Kramer. "Collective impact." Stanford Social Intervention Review (2011): 36-41. Retrieved from: https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.lano.org/resource/dynamic/blogs/20131007_093137_25993.pdf Labonte, Ronald. "Community, community development, and the forming of authentic partnerships: Some critical reflections." Community organizing and community building for health 2 (2005): 82-96 in Minkler, Meredith, ed. Community organizing and community building for health and welfare 3rd Ed.. Rutgers University Press, 2015." Prybil, Lawrence, et al. "Improving community health through hospital-public health collaboration: Insights and lessons learned from successful partnerships." (2014). Retrieved from: http://www.uky.edu/publichealth/sites/www.uky.edu.publichealth/files/Research/hospital-public%20health%20partnership%20report_12-8-14.pdf Purnell, D. (2017). Radical Political Action. Boston Review. Retrieved from: http://bostonreview.net/editors-picks-race-reading-lists-books-ideas/derecka-purnell-boston-review-radical-political-action Shiffman, J (2014, Nov) (A). Knowledge and the Exercise of Power in Global Health. International Journal of Health Policy Management 3(6): 297-299 Shiffman, J. (2015, July) (B). Global health as a field of power relations. International Journal of Health Policy Management 4(7): 497-499 Szreter, Simon. "The Importance of Social Intervention in Britain's Mortality Decline c. 1850? 1914: a Re-interpretation of the Role of Public Health." A social history of medicine 1.1 (1988): 1-38. Taylor, Daniel C., and Carl E. Taylor. Just and lasting change: When communities own their futures. JHU Press, 2016.