Course Offerings

Our program is designed to provide students with the knowledge and skills needed to address some of the most pressing public health challenges facing our communities today. Through a multidisciplinary curriculum, our students learn to apply critical thinking and problem-solving skills to the complex issues facing public health and the health of populations. We place a strong emphasis on the importance of understanding the social determinants of health and the role of health equity in improving the health of populations. Students also customize their curriculum with 2-3 electives of their choosing, in addition to a capstone project or internship in their chosen area of public health.

Students must successfully complete 30 credits to satisfy degree requirements for the Master of Science in Health and the Public Interest program. The program is offered in-person only, save for the fall pre-session course in August.

Core Courses

This 3-week ‘boot camp’ examines how cultural, social, political, economical, and business forces influence health. The course offers a variety of social science views on how contextual and biological variables interact to influence public health. It will also investigate individual experiences and manifestations of physical and mental disease and wellbeing. This course exemplifies the program’s multidisciplinary nature while summarizing the present level of knowledge about social and cultural determinants of health. Additionally, it explores the effects of all non-medical variables on perceptions of wellness and disease, treatment choices, and health outcomes. Students will explore who has the right to access treatments and how health fits in with other social issues such as philosophy, economics, and ethics using theoretical papers and recent empirical case studies.

While listed as a fall semester course in the Schedule of Classes, this course runs from early to late August, concluding just before the start of the full, in-person fall semester.

This course focuses on understanding and critically analyzing medical literature regarding diagnostic, preventive, and therapeutic interventions in humans. It covers basic epidemiology and evidence-based medicine, which includes the appropriate and inappropriate use of observational studies (cross-sectional, cohort, and case-control studies) and randomized controlled trials. The course will also cover adverse event assessment through passive and active “pharmaco-surveillance” systems. Finally, it explores premarket pharmaceutical and medical device testing required by regulatory authorities, as well as sensitivity, specificity, odds ratios, relative risk, power, and confidence intervals.

Understanding biomedical literature, appropriate trial design, and perceptions of healing require a basic grounding in physiologic concepts. This course focuses on major biological systems and cover aspects of the cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, and central nervous systems. Students will develop basic knowledge of, and an appreciation for, human function in health and disease.

This course uses the principles of economics to study the allocation of resources used to provide health and long-term care. It also examines market inadequacies and failures that have affected the financing, organization, and delivery of care. Additionally, students analyze the impact of private and public insurance programs on the organization and delivery of health care, and the relationships between politics, policies, and the health care markets. This course teaches and applies basic economic principles to the study of health care.

The weekly seminar series is a highlight of the program. We take full advantage of the plethora of scholars and policymakers in the Washington D.C area, inviting a new speaker each week of the fall and spring semesters to discuss a public health topic of their choice in the style of a guest lecture. MS-HAPI students moderate two seminar sessions by introducing the speaker and moderating the Q&A portion of the talk. Students may also recommend speakers of interest to the Program Co-Directors. The seminar series is also open to the public; learn more on our seminar series webpage.

Past speakers have included Peter Lurie MD, Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest; Cindy Pearson, Executive Director of the National Women’s Health Network; Thea Lee, President of the Economic Policy Institute; and Greg Pappas MD PhD, of the Food and Drug Administration.

In this highly experiential class, students learn about various advocacy strategies and why they are effective in creating change. Students participate in and analyze advocacy events; create and implement group advocacy campaigns with the aim of influencing policy; and critique current advocacy efforts by national organizations. This course fosters an understanding of cross-disciplinary approaches necessary for creating successful medical and public health interventions.

This course covers the basics of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. The primary goal of this course is to prepare students to select the best analytic approaches, analyze data, and interpret qualitative and quantitative data presented to them. For qualitative skills, we will cover grounded theory, content analysis, and semantic analysis, including an introduction to participant-observation methods, interview techniques, focus groups, archival research, and discourse analysis. For quantitative skills, we will cover basic research design and statistics, including the fundamentals of probability, statistical inference, basic statistical assumptions, and hypothesis testing using correlations, non-parametric tests, analysis of variance, and linear and logistic regression. The course also focuses on ways to integrate these skills in mixed-method designs.

This discussion-based course uses a case-study approach to provide a practical overview and working knowledge of health communication strategies. This is done with the goal of informing and influencing individual and community decisions that enhance health and implement public health programs. Participants will become familiar with a range of resources and organizations, debate the merits of various approaches, and analyze health communication programs and materials. The course interweaves ample examples from past pandemics.

Elective Courses

Students in the MS-HAPI program may enroll in electives outside of the program at a variety of Georgetown institutions, including the McCourt School of Public Policy, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, School of Health, Law Center, and more. Registration in an elective course is subject to approval by the HAPI Program Directors and the instructor for the elective course. The following course names and descriptions are examples of courses students have taken in the past; however, course availability is subject to change by term and course capacity. Please review the Schedule of Classes for more information on elective offerings.

Cancer health disparities represent a major public health problem in the United States. This course addresses the biological basis for the observed unequal burdens of cancer across racial/ethnic populations. The impact of genetic/genomic/epigenetic variability between groups that may affect cancer susceptibility and/or response to therapy which is vital to reducing the cancer gaps will be explored. The course will also explore evidence-based mechanisms that are designed to increase our understanding of biological factors and mechanisms that play a role in cancer health disparities.

Science diplomacy is the use of scientific collaboration among various countries to address common problems and to build constructive international partnerships and policies. With greater globalization in business and other activities, public health concerns have become more urgent. Implementing appropriate policies and distributing accurate information on emerging diseases, health hazards, and health related terrorist threats are an eminent goal for health policy experts. In this seminar course, students will establish 1) a fundamental understanding of science policy and diplomacy by learning key components such as principles of bioethics, technology transfers, science literacy, funding merits for basic and applied research, and biomedical ethics; 2) an understanding of the practical development and application of science policy by examining how science policies are drafted and implemented by Congress 3) a knowledge of recent emerging diseases and other public health concerns including radiation effects as will be presented by the instructor or guest speakers who are leading experts in the fields. A thorough understanding of science is the crucial component for policy makers and those who are involved in preparing policies. By the end of the course, students will be able to draft policies for science diplomacy in order to address current emerging infectious diseases as well as other global health concerns.

This seminar explores, through lecture, discussion, role playing, and problem solving, the range of legal challenges and public policy issues affecting older adults. Subject areas include health care benefits (Medicare, Medicaid); long-term services and supports (nursing homes, home and community-based services, long-term care insurance, state-based programs); income security programs (Social Security, SSI); aging and autonomy, including elder abuse, neglect and exploitation and advance planning related to incapacity (powers of attorney, guardianship and its alternatives, choices regarding life-sustaining medical treatment); housing and consumer issues affecting older adults; and ethical issues in representing older adults. Coursework will address systemic inequities faced by older adults of color, older women, LGBTQ older adults, older adults with disabilities, and older adults who are immigrants or have limited English proficiency. The seminar is both practice- and policy-oriented and integrative with respect to other coursework and related disciplines.

The course will explore the potential for innovative approaches and technologies to “disrupt” business as usual approaches to global health, including digital health, mobile technology, and design thinking. These opportunities are often led by the private sector, and are usually client centered rather than driven by traditional health system stakeholders. The course will feature guest lecturers by subject matter experts from academia, the private sector, government agencies, and international organizations.

This course provides an introduction to how public policy can be used to improve healthcare quality and the public reporting of quality.

Topics include:
(1) The National Quality Strategy under the Affordable Care Act (ACA); quality under “Medicare For All” proposals; the Quality Payment Program under MACRA and MIPS; the quality of Medicaid; racial/ethnic disparities in quality; international comparisons.
(2) Quality measures and the science of ranking and comparing providers.
(3) Designing incentives for rewarding quality
(4) Protecting the patient: patient safety and medical errors
(5) Coordinating care: electronic health records and digital health care; the medical home model; bundled payment design
(6) Measuring preventive care quality
(7) Reporting quality: report cards; consumer use of public reports; physician use of internal reports; crowd-sourced quality ratings
(8) Measuring overuse, underuse, waste, and the costs-savings from quality; comparative effectiveness methods; geographical cost and quality variation
(9) Current policy issues in personalized medicine and genomics
(10) The impact of insurer/provider competition and consolidation on quality
(11) The Opioid Crisis.

This course will examine the evolution of legal and policy responses to addiction, mental health, and related social issues. Legal frameworks, policy levers, and political landscapes that impact system reform will be examined. The first part of the course will introduce students to key principles in addiction and mental health law with a focus on the tension between the role and power of government and individual rights and liberties. The second part of the course will highlight key themes in the evolution of addiction and mental health policy. We will end by identifying policy levers and practical tools for reform.

In this course, we focus on understanding women’s reproductive health and well-being around the world. This includes exploring women’s reproductive health status as well as the multiple determinants of their health. We will explore major causes of morbidity and mortality for women and their newborns, current and emerging health issues, effective policies, strategies and programmatic approaches.

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