GLOBAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVES

The Global and Developmental Perspectives studio consolidates and extends students' analysis of the field of public health through the exploration of global and developmental perspectives on challenges and strategies to address them. Lifecourse research recognizes that adverse exposures experienced by individuals and populations, both biological and social, during critical developmental periods (including prenatal, childhood, and adolescence) have specific, cumulative, and often long-standing implications for health which may not manifest until many years later.

The concept of globalization and its interconnected and interdependent forces and relations are used as the basis for considering the increasingly global nature of public health practice and its politics regarding both the nature of health risk and inequity and the capacities to address these. Globalization and its causal pathways linked to patterns of risk, illness, injury and mortality will be explored; and also the effects of colonization, decolonization and the Cold War, and neoliberal reforms and globalization in creating conditions that exposed the globe to intense migration, trade and ecological shifts that have intensified the risks of old and new diseases and exacerbated public health disparities. Developmental and global perspectives are crucial to addressing primary health care, and disease-specific approaches include maternal child health (MCH), communicable disease (CD), and non-communicable disease, and injury (NCDI), the consideration of which is woven into the studio schedule. 

Concentration: Lifecourse

The Lifecourse concentration is the first of the two concentrations in this studio. The concentration contains 5 classes, including 2 demography-focused units. In this concentration, students will learn how lifecourse approaches have emerged in public health, how health varies within and across the stages of the lifecourse and across societies shaped both by biological and social pathways that shape our identities and health, how demographic data is collected and spans the lifecourse, and how an understanding of this variation improves public health policies and programs, as well as identifies targets for interventions. 

The concentration emphasizes the importance of historical context and time (e.g. socioeconomic, cultural) in shaping health across the lifecourse. The approach particularly focuses on individuals and the connections between