Global Health as Human Development and Human Experience: Case Studies (CMPH-0315)

Spring 2024 · CMPH 0315 · Tufts University · 1.5 credits · Undergraduate

Global health is most commonly studied in classrooms, and implemented in practice, under paradigms of public health or clinical medicine. In this course, we will take a broader view of global health through careful reading of works by anthropologists, economists, and social epidemiologists. We will situate global health within larger questions of development and social change, while simultaneously reading intimate ethnographic and journalistic accounts that provide perspective on how health shapes the human experience, especially for marginalized populations globally. We will first explore how global health fits into larger discourses on poverty and development. The course will then focus on case studies drawn from a variety of academic disciplines. We will discuss ethnographic research on undocumented immigrants and injection drug users in the U.S., urban slum residents in India, doctors and pharmacists in Tajikistan, and medical students in Malawi to understand how health and healthcare are experienced and how social exclusion shapes the production of health in different contexts. We will also discuss the work of economists exploring issues such as the causes and consequences of inadequate sanitation and open defecation in India and of rising “deaths of despair” in the U.S. This course will complement the survey course that will be taught in alternate years for the MD/MPH program called “Global Health: Concepts, Conditions, and Careers".

Course codes: CMPH-0315, CMPH 0315, CMPH0315, CMPH-315, CMPH 315, CMPH315

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