Faculty of Health Sciences
Applied Public Health Research Methods
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-2
This course will prepare students to undertake research in public health by teaching them to critique the scientific literature, understand the ethics review process, articulate their research through grantsmanship, create a project plan, and learn how to share their research with a scientific and a non-specialist audience. By the end of the course, students will be able to conduct research from idea to proposal to execution. Students will learn to: develop meaningful and answerable research questions; complete a literature search; develop an applied research approach and plan; identify appropriate data sources and collection methods; present their project idea in a clear, concise manner; and translate research knowledge to difference audiences.
Prerequisite(s):Admission to a graduate program
Biostatistics I
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-2-0
This course will introduce the varied ways that biostatistics is used in public health including assessing the etiology of disease, monitoring and detecting population health trends, and evaluating the effectiveness of health programs and policies. This course has been designed to complement Health Sciences 2003 and can be taken in tandem with or after that course. Students will learn to choose and build models of statistical inference for the epidemiologic study designs covered in Health Sciences 2003, all without the use of complicated mathematical formulas. Applications to real data will be emphasized using the R computer package. Students will learn to perform biostatistical coding, analyses and data visualization in R; interpret R output and draw conclusions; and describe findings in a public health context.
Prerequisite(s):Admission to a graduate program
Advanced Program Planning, Implementation and Evaluation
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Students will learn to apply the principles of program planning, development, budgeting, implementation, management, and evaluation in organizational and community initiatives; identify critical stakeholders and engage them in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health programs; develop public health programs and strategies responsive to the diverse cultural values and traditions of the communities being served; understand theoretical foundations of various types and purposes of evaluation; practice development and application of program logic models and evaluation frameworks, through data collection, analysis and utilization in program quality improvement cycles; apply project ethics review to program planning, implementation and evaluation; and identify and implement the most appropriate ways of evaluation results translation to diverse stakeholders and audiences.
Prerequisite(s):Admission to a graduate program
Advanced Epidemiology
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-2
The prerequisite for this course, Health Sciences 2003/Biology 2003, taught introductory principles sufficient to interpret and critique basic published epidemiologic research. Public Health 5003 builds on this knowledge base by focusing on advanced principles, as well as the practice of epidemiology. Students will learn how to design their own observational or experimental epidemiologic study, and how to develop a systematic review protocol. This course will include a lab component to ensure students gain the hands on experience needed to design epidemiologic research, and the epidemiologic field methods required to support the validity, precision, and management of data collected. Advanced special topics covered in this course include clinical epidemiology, epigenetic epidemiology, environmental epidemiology, and social and psychiatric epidemiology.
Prerequisite(s):Admission to a graduate program AND
Health Sciences 2003/Biology 2003 (or equivalent)
Equivalent:Public Health 4003
Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Students will learn how to design research and analyze data for the most commonly used qualitative and mixed methods approaches in public health. Students will learn how to develop questions, interview and focus group guides, facilitate interviews and focus groups, analyze qualitative data, and report findings for narrative studies; phenomenological studies; grounded theory studies; institutional ethnographic studies; and case studies. Analysis methods will include discourse analysis and other techniques. In the second part of this course, students will learn how to triangulate research in public health through commonly used mixed methods approached (sequential exploratory, sequential explanatory, concurrent triangulation, and concurrent embedded methods); and the potential challenges to conducting mixed methods studies in our field.
Prerequisite(s):Admission to a graduate program
Recommended Background:
Health Sciences 3260 (or equivalent)
Advanced Public Health Policy and Ethics
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
Building on Public Health 2100 which introduces students to fundamental concepts in policy, politics, and health; in this advanced course students will learn key ethical concepts and principles related to public health such as paternalism and autonomy, liberty and the state, the harm principle, individual consent, health equity, value pluralism, and more. They will develop a richer understanding of the policy systems and subsystems that govern, regulate, finance, and deliver public services and have the opportunity to apply ethical principles to discussions of public policy and governance. Students will develop: a sophisticated understanding of the intersections of policy and ethics in public health; the skills to critically analyze policy; and the ability to apply learnings to contemporary ethical and political policy issues.
Prerequisite(s):Admission to a graduate program
Applied Infectious Diseases
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-0-0
In this graduate course, students will apply epidemiological principles to the control and management of communicable disease outbreaks at the population level. Students will gain an in-depth understanding of disease transmission and emerging infectious disease threats locally and globally. By the end of this course students will be able to understand the dynamics of communicable disease (pathogens, hosts, transmission); and apply primary, secondary and tertiary prevention efforts to control population outbreaks.
Prerequisite(s):Admission to a graduate program AND
Health Sciences 2003/Biology 2003 (or equivalent) AND
Health Sciences 2400 (or equivalent)
Biostatistics II
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 3-2-0
Students will learn to map biostatistical techniques onto the study designs examined in Public Health 5003 without focusing on complicated mathematical formulas. Biostatistics II will build on Biostatistics I by teaching advanced model building and diagnostics for various forms of regression, with a focus on the analysis of incidence-based designs using proportional hazards regression and other techniques. Given the frequency of nonmonotonic associations in public health, methods of working with nonlinear associations (e.g., cubic splines) will be described. Students will learn multiplicative and additive effect modification and use of propensity scores to account for covariates in models. Bayesian statistics will be introduced given the growing importance of these methods in our field. Applications to real data will be emphasized using the R computer package.
Prerequisite(s):Public Health 5001 AND
Public Health 5003
Advanced Public Health Practicum
Credit hours: 3.00
Contact hours per week: 0-0-0
Other hours per term: 0-0-420
Students will engage in an experiential learning placement in a public health setting under the direction of a preceptor (or shared preceptorship within a team). This hands-on opportunity will enrich graduate training by allowing students to integrate and apply skills and knowledge gained through graduate coursework in the Public Health specialization in a variety of public health work environments. This practicum opportunity will offer advanced placements at local, provincial and national levels that will challenge and build leadership and advanced research, program and policy skills in public health. This is a pass/fail course. To be successful, students must meet all learning objectives and requirements for the practicum. Students must complete a minimum of 112 hours, and up to 420 hours, depending on their placement agreement.
Prerequisite(s):Public Health 5000 AND
Public Health 5001 AND
Public Health 5002 AND
Public Health 5003