CPH 640 Systems Thinking for Public Health

Credits: 3
Persistent challenges in public health - such as health disparities, disease prevention, and implementation of evidence-based health interventions - are often resistant to efforts to change the status quo. Factors at multiple socioecological levels interact in complex ways to produce outcomes that impact health and wellbeing. Standard analytic approaches are limited in their ability to account for this complexity. Systems thinking is an alternative but complementary approach that uses certain strategies and tools for better understanding complex problems and identify potential points of effective intervention. This course provides an introduction to systems thinking for public health professionals. Students learn to apply practical approaches for identifying system characteristics, feedback dynamics driving health and implementation outcomes, and interventions tailored to context. We will also critically engage with broader questions regarding sustained transformation of social systems to ensure health and health equity at the population scale.

Graded: A-F
May be taken only once for credit
Also offered as: CPH 540