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Public Health Perspectives

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Course Type Course Code No. Of Credits
Discipline Core SPG3PH601 4

Semester and Year Offered: 1st Semester, 1st Year

Course Coordinator and Team: Samik Chowdhury and N. Nakkeeran

Email of course coordinator: samik@aud.ac.in

Pre-requisites: None

Aim:  This course introduces the field of public health to students. The course begins with the foundational values, scope and key concepts in public health and subsequently engages with the history of public health, social determination and social determinants of health, economics of health and the health system. The course will attempt to present diverse perspectives under each of these topics, discuss their strengths and limitations and illustrate them in the Indian context. The objective of this course is to familiarize students who may be from a non- public health or a medical health disciplinary background, with the key elements of public health and debates around them.

Course Outcomes:

  • Understanding the core values of public health
  • Appreciating the interdisciplinarity of the field of public health
  • Identifying social, economic and political determinants of health
  • Developing a strong understanding of key health system components

Brief description of modules/ Main modules:

  • Public health foundations : This module introduces the scope of public health, its philosophical and ethical foundations and its diverse meanings; the correspondence and divergence between public health, medicine and epidemiology; conceptual foundations of sub-disciplines like medical sociology, medical anthropology and health sociology – their relevance and limitations and some key concepts in public health
  • History of public health: This module aims for a historical understanding of public health and its scientific and conceptual foundations, important public health milestones and personalities associated with them. It will also present the diverse perspectives and debates around the causes of trend decline in mortality and the evolution of allopathy as the dominant system of medicine. Historical evolution of public health in India will be a part of this module along with experiences from other countries and continents.
  • Social and political determinants of health: This module deals with the relevance of social hierarchy and power relations for public health outcomes. The key conceptual frame for this module is therefore equity. The module also discusses the concept of social determinants of health with a deeper engagement with some of these determinants.
  • Economics of health care: This module offer students another analytical lens to study public health and health care. It elucidates certain special features (asymmetric information, moral hazard, externality) of health which makes it unsuitable to be provided optimally by the market thereby warranting a dominant role of the state. The module also looks at the macroeconomic causal linkages between health, disease and economic development and the implications of globalization on public health.
  • Health systems: Starting with a discussion on the goals, values and principles that guide a health system, the module will briefly introduce students to the concept of systems thinking in public health. The remaining part of the module engages with selected building blocks of a health system like financing, governance, human resource, physical infrastructure and drugs & supplies.

Assessment Details with weights:

  • Essay: identify an issue of public health concern and write a 1000-word essay on it. (30%)
  • Presentation: on any social determinant of health in the context of India (40%).
  • Term paper: with extensive literature review on an identified topic closer to the research interest of the student (30%)

Selected Readings:

  • Lee, L.M., Zarowsky, C. Foundational values for public health. Public Health Rev 36, 2 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40985-015-0004-1
  • Sigdel, R. (2012). Role of medical sociology and anthropology in public health and health system development. Health Prospect, 11, 28-29.
  • McKeown, T., 1979. The role of medicine: dream, mirage or nemesis? Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press
  • Engels, F. (1993). The condition of the working class in England. Oxford University Press, USA.
  • Szreter, S., "The Population Health Approach in Historical Perspective", American Journal of Public Health, March 2003, Vol 93, No. 3:421-31
  • Porter, D. (2005). Health, civilization and the state: a history of public health from ancient to modern times. Routledge.
  • Rosen, G. (2015). A history of public health. Jhu Press.
  • Dasgupta, M., Public Health in India: Dangerous Neglect, Economic and Political Weekly December 3, 2005: 5159-65
  • Harrison, M., and Pati, Biswamoy, (2009) "Social history of health and medicine: Colonial India", in Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison (eds.) The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India, Routledge: London, 1-14.
  • Paul, BD., “Social Science in Public Health”, American Journal of Public Health, 46(11): 1956:1390 -96.  10.2105/ajph.46.11.1390
  • Anand, S., Peter, F., & Sen, A. (2004). Public health, ethics, and equity. OUP Oxford.
  • Whitehead, M. (1991). The concepts and principles of equity and health. Health promotion international, 6(3), 217-228.
  • Napier, AD., et al., “Culture and health”, Lancet 2014; 384: pp. 1607–39 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ S0140-6736(14)61603-2
  • Marmot M, Richard G. Wilkinson, Social Determinants of Health, Oxford University Press, 2006 7)
  • Microeconomic Tools for Health Economics (Chapter 2), The Economics of Health and Health Care, Sherman Folland, Allen C. Goodman, Miron Stano, Pearson.
  • Arrow, K. (1963) "Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care.'' American Economic Review, 53, pp. 941-973
  • Acemoglu, Daron, and Simon Johnson, "Disease and Development: The Effect of Life Expectancy on Economic Growth," Journal of Political Economy, 2007, 115(6), 925-985.
  • Indian Public Health Standards for SC’s, PHC’s, CHC’s, sub-district hospitals and district hospitals
  • Health Systems Review and Health Systems in Transition reports for various countries
  • High Level Expert Group (HLEG) Report on Universal Health Coverage, GOI, 2011
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