HPH Course Descriptions

This course provides an introduction to the field of public health that aims to develop an appreciation of the unique and important mission of public health; an understanding of the history, values, ethics, mission, and goals of public health; and knowledge about how public health functions today including the organization, financing, policies, and practices of public health.  Students will be expected to think critically about whether public health has achieved its mission in today’s world and how the profession might develop in the future. (3 credits).

This course provides an overview of the research process including formulation of a research problem, conceptualization of the research design, construction of the instrument for data collection, selection of the sample, collection of data, processing of data, and writing the research report.  Topics include how to identify a research question and, correspondingly, how to formulate a clear, concise hypothesis or set of hypotheses; reasons and procedures for reviewing the literature; overview of observational and interventional research designs; review of measurement theory, types of scales, and commonly used measures in public health-related research; data collection methods including survey and qualitative methods; and the ethical conduct of research.  Through the introduction of these topics, the course provides a general background for individuals who are interested in learning the fundamentals of how to prepare a research proposal. (3 credits).

This course presents current topics and issues in population health studies.  3 credits.

This is part 1 of a 2-term course and is intended to provide students and researchers in public health with an introduction to the principles of statistical methods and their application in biomedical and public health research. Students are expected to enroll in parts 1 and 2 sequentially within the same academic year. This course includes introductions to the use of computers for statistical analysis, summarizing and exploring data, probability theory, discrete and continuous probability distributions, populations and samples, sampling distributions and statistical inference, hypothesis testing, sample size and power, two-sample comparisons, analysis of variance, association and correlation, simple linear regression and simple logistic regression.  Prerequisite: Math placement exam score of 3 or higher. 3 credits.

This is part 2 of a 2-term course and is intended to provide students and researchers in public health with an introduction to the principles of statistical methods and their application in biomedical and public health research. Students are expected to enroll in parts 1 and 2 sequentially within the same academic year. This course includes introductions to the use of computers for statistical analysis, summarizing and exploring data, probability theory, discrete and continuous probability distributions, populations and samples, sampling distributions and statistical inference, hypothesis testing, sample size and power, two-sample comparisons, analysis of variance, association and correlation, simple linear regression and simple logistic regression.  Prerequisite: HPH 506. 3 credits.

This course introduces students to the system that we have developed to deliver health care in the United States, with international comparisons.  The topics include the organization and financing of health care systems, access to health care including health insurance, regulation and policy issues, and the health care workforce.  3 credits

This course presents basic epidemiologic concepts used to study health and disease in populations.  It provides an overview of the major causes of morbidity and mortality, including methods of measurement (e.g., incidence, prevalence). Observational and experimental epidemiologic studies will be described and their advantages and disadvantages compared. The course aims for students to begin developing the skills needed to evaluate data, interpret reports, and design and conduct studies.  Students will be introduced to the various areas of epidemiologic study- cancer, molecular/genetic, environmental, occupational, social and behavioral, and infectious disease/surveillance. The course comprises both lectures and small group seminars for in-depth discussions of previously assigned topics. Prerequisite: HPH 501 and HPH 506. 3 credits.

This course is designed to provide the fundamentals of environmental and occupational health and to educate students on issues related to major environmental and occupational concerns.  It will provide a forum for the discussion of local and national environmental and occupational public health issues. The content of the course will focus on major pollutants, their detection, impact on health, and principles of remediation.  Using various teaching techniques, students will be exposed to current environmental and occupational topics and approaches to prevention and treatment. The course will emphasize the most recent research in the field. 3 credits.

Intensive reading, under supervision of one or more instructors, of material not covered in the formal curriculum, or execution of a research project under the supervision of one or more faculty members. Instructor consent required. 3 credits.

This course introduces students to population health as one of the organizing concepts in public health and the orientation that differentiates public health from medicine.  Consistent with public health tradition, health is discussed from an ecological perspective, and the course presents current knowledge about the multiple determinants of population health including socioeconomic status, the physical environment, medical care, individual behavior, and genetics and the interaction of these factors.  Also covered is the measurement of population health, sources of data, and methods for assessing population health improvements. 3 credits.

This course introduces students to health policy analysis and public health program evaluation, two distinct fields that share similar tools, albeit with different goals in mind and approaches to meet these goals. Specifically, this course (1) draws on economics, epidemiology, political science, and biostatistics to prepare students to conduct holistic analyses of health policy issues; (2) prepares students to plan a program evaluation; and (3) prepares students to evaluate public policy options. 3 credits.

This course explores major themes and interpretations in the history of public health and medicine since the 18th century.  Particular emphasis is placed on the influence of social and cultural developments on medicine and public health, and vice versa.  American developments will be placed in a broad comparative perspective including both Western and non-Western nations. 3 credits.

This course is an intermediate level graduate course in the application of spatial methods for analyzing environmental exposure and disease data. Students with backgrounds in epidemiology, public health, environmental health, biostatistics, community health, biology, sociology, psychology, marine and atmospheric sciences, geosciences, demography, and geography are particularly encouraged to participate. Although the course will focus on examples related to human health, graduate students in other disciplines will find the course useful for specific and appropriately defined research purposes.  Techniques for spatially analyzing point patterns and aggregated data in polygons will be introduced, including autocorrelation, clustering analysis, geostatistical smoothing, and approaches for spatial regression. Consideration of space-time variability will also be covered. This course includes theoretical elements so that the student will learn to appreciate strengths and weaknesses of different spatial approaches. Prerequisite: Course in GIS or equivalent, as determined by consent from the instructor. 3 credits.

NOTE: Students need a foundational knowledge of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software. This requirement can be met by completing GSS313/314: GIS Design and Application and separate lab course (if available), by completing other Introduction to GIS courses at Stony Brook or elsewhere, or by self-teaching using the following book: Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop by Tim Ormsby, Eileen Napoleon, and Robert Burke. Courses are available for free for Stony Brook students on lynda.com: https://www.lynda.com/ArcGIS-training-tutorials/1963-0.html ("Up and Running with ArcGIS" and "ArcGIS Essential Training" are both recommended).

This course will provide health personnel with a basic awareness of the problems of the world's' population with special focus on the poorest. To promote these objectives, this course has been designed to introduce medical and public health students to key population health topics from a global perspective, with special emphasis placed on the health and welfare of women and young children in low-income countries. The health impact of emergent and re-emergent infectious diseases will be reviewed, including HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and sexually transmitted infections. Malnutrition will be discussed. Students will be introduced to demography and the impact of population increases on the global environment. There will be discussions of the health problems of immigrants to the U.S. from tropical countries.  3 credits.

This course will provide health personnel with a basic awareness of the problems of the worlds' population with special focus on the poorest. To promote these objectives, this course has been designed to introduce medical and public health students to key population health topics from a global perspective, with special emphasis placed on trends in morbidity and mortality, maternal and perinatal mortality in low-income countries, and war, catastrophe and displaced persons. The health impact of emergent infectious diseases will be reviewed including water-borne diseases, emerging antibiotic resistance, bioterrorism, and parasitic disease. The design and effectiveness of foreign aid programs will be discussed. Students will be introduced to demography and the impact of population increases on the global environment. There will be discussions of the health problems of immigrants to the U.S. from tropical countries. Finally, students will learn about vaccination and other safety issues related to traveling and working in the tropics. 3 credits.

In this survey course, students learn about the major social and behavioral theories used in health promotion.  Rather than simply cataloguing each theory in turn, this course takes a ‘constant comparative’ approach to the learning of theories, in which theories are dissected to their core elements and compared to each other in order to understand the points of convergence and divergence among them. The goal in taking this comparative approach is application: by knowing the core elements of various theories, students will more easily be able to choose appropriate theories to explain community health problems of interest. In addition to covering traditional individual-level behavior change theories, this course will focus on community and social change theories, challenging students to think about the role of social context on health behavior and community health promotion. After learning about commonly-used social and behavioral theories, students will learn about and critique theories that are less-commonly used but have important implications for health promotion. 3 credits

This course provides an overview of health communication. The course will introduce theories concerning health communication, and build on such to provide practical approaches to interpersonal and organizational health communication, risk communication, and media campaigns. Students will learn to collect, organize, and convey information effectively to different audiences important to public health initiatives. Throughout, the course will emphasize how health literacy and cultural beliefs influence effective communication, and students will be challenged to develop communication tools (e.g., social marketing campaigns, presentations, op-eds) optimized for a specific population. 3 credits

In this course, students learn how to develop theoretically-informed and evidence-based community health initiatives.  Over the course of the semester, students work on developing their own culturally-competent community health initiatives, each of which is targeted at a particular population with a specific health need.  Each student learns how to assess community needs and assets using a variety of methods, elaborate an initiative’s theory of change through use of logic model, design theoretically-informed intervention activities appropriate to the needs/assets identified, create a budget and organizational structure, and engage key stakeholders at every facet of development and implementation of the community health initiative. Students work together in the same small group over the course of the semester to get/give feedback and hone their individual projects. Through this intense group work, students both (1) learn how to apply course concepts to several particular community health problems and (2) gain skills for working in teams on community health initiative planning and implementation. Prerequisite: HPH 550.  3 credits

This course prepares students to plan, implement, and utilize an evaluation of a community health initiative.  Basic principles and practices of evaluation are addressed, including identifying the goals of a community health initiative; designing an evaluation plan that can determine if the initiative’s goals are achieved; implementing an evaluation plan; interacting with stakeholders; and using evaluation results to improve performance. 3 credits.

This course introduces students to the basic theory and methods employed in the study of demography and global health. This course will provide an introduction to the field of global health and challenge students to think about how a global perspective could impact their future public health practice. The students will also learn about sources of demographic data, patterns in global fertility and mortality, and the demographic transition. 3 credits.

This course will provide students with an in-depth review of principles of public health research methods. Emphasis will be placed on conceptualization of research questions, evaluation of research design, sample size, and issues related to potential threats to validity within a public/applied setting. Additionally, students will become familiar with how to evaluate methods used in published literature and to design their own research projects. Course topics will include how to obtain secondary data, sample size calculation, risk adjustment, bias, confounding, and interaction. The instructor will work with students as they develop their own analytic project proposals. Students will be expected to implement their proposed research in HPH 560 Applied Biostatistics in the following semester. 3 credits.

Students learn to formulate a scientific question in terms of a statistical model, leading to objective and quantitative answers.  Topics may include analysis of variance, regression, including details of data-analytic techniques and implications for study design, measures of association, 2x2 tables, stratification, matched pairs, logistic regression, model building, analysis of rates, and survival data analysis using proportional hazards models.  The course stresses applications in epidemiology, and other areas of public health research. Prerequisite: HPH 507 & HPH 559. 3 credits.

This course provides students with an introduction to the principles of public health informatics and data management using the SAS systems. Lectures and labs will be aimed at developing hands-on skills about how to create, maintain, and manage databases using the SAS Systems for Windows, a major software package used frequently in public health and clinical research. In addition, the student will learn how to retrieve and summarize information about population health from major public health information systems in the U.S. 3 credits.

The course will introduce the uses and conduct of cost benefit and cost effectiveness analyses as decision-making aids in the health care research.  It will provide students with an understanding of the roles and limitations of cost benefit and cost effectiveness analyses and criteria for evaluating those studies. Critical issues regarding measuring cost and effectiveness, evaluating outcomes, discounting, and dealing with uncertainty will be discussed. Prerequisite: HPH 507 and HPH 562.  3 credits.

In this course, students learn about the logic, theory, and methods of qualitative research within population health and related fields (e.g., social welfare, nursing, medicine, sociology, and psychology). The course begins with an introduction to the epistemological and ontological underpinnings of qualitative inquiry, with special attention to how these factors affect the types of research questions often asked (and answered) by qualitative researchers.  Students then learn the nuts-and-bolts of qualitative research design and data collection through review of existing qualitative studies and hands-on application. Homework and in-class exercises over the course of the semester give students practice in (a) designing a feasible qualitative research study, and (b) collecting three kinds of qualitative data: participant observation, in-depth interviews, and focus groups. The course concludes with an overview of steps for data analysis, including coding, memo-writing, and triangulation. Emphasized throughout the course are methodological issues germane to qualitative (and quantitative) research: reflexivity of the researcher, appropriate treatment of human subjects, and obtaining quality data. 3 credits.

This course is an applied internship in a public, not-for-profit, or private sector organization that provides a public health service. Students will gain practical public health skills though a semester long internship.  The student will work in the organization and prepares a weekly journal of activities, as well as a paper at the conclusion of the course, applying program knowledge to the internship activities. Graduate Graded and may be repeated for credit. Instructor consent required. 0-12 credits.

The Practicum is a practical public health experience conducted with a Faculty Advisor and a Preceptor from a public health-related organization.  Students will be expected to demonstrate their “capacity to organize, analyze, interpret and communicate knowledge in an applied manner.” Health departments, as well as a variety of other local organizations, offer a wide array of potential sites for the Practicum experience.  Instructor consent required. 3 credits.

Note: Students with placements within Stony Brook University Hospital will be required to set-up a Castlebranch account for background checks and compliance requirements. Students will be responsible for any associated fees.

This course will assist students in synthesizing the basic public health knowledge through completion of a Capstone Project.  Most core and concentration coursework must be complete before the student can participate in the Capstone Seminar. Instructor consent required. 3 credits.