The courses that I completed under the Health & Wellness concentration allowed me to better understand issues and underlying causes of health inequity in the U.S. and globally. As a potential medical professional in the future who will have to help patients navigate the American health care system, I wanted to learn about health care models as well considering their influence on health inequity. These classes also discussed different approaches to combatting health inequity on different levels (individual, local, national, international, etc.) as well as their historical pros and cons.
Amal Saeed
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pittsburgh
Global Studies Coursework
Coursework Descriptions
This class provided insight on the influence of neoliberal capitalism on socioeconomic inequity globally, to a degree that the world has split into a “global North” and “global South.” This was discussed through commodity chain analysis, for example by looking at the “fast fashion” industry and how corporations make enormous profits off of unethical/underpaid labor. Learning about the influence of neoliberal capitalism through this class was critical to fully understanding broader socioeconomic contexts of issues such as health inequity, relevant to my concentration of Health & Wellness.
This course provided a broad overview of topics and trends relevant to global health including infectious disease, noncommunicable disease, maternal health, and health care system models. These issues were discussed in consideration of socioeconomic contexts of the regions being discussed. Global health inequity was also discussed in relation to overarching socioeconomic inequity. The class featured guest lecturers including Pitt faculty and staff in the School of Public Health.
This course focused on the history of global health measures including quarantines and eradication campaigns such as the malaria and polio eradication programs. The class discussed programs on local, domestic, and international levels, discussing programs run by the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as programs started within nations such as BRAC. We discussed barriers and challenges for the success of global health initiatives including issues of cultural sensitivity. As a result, we also discussed the importance of working alongside local individuals and organizations to ensure public health measures are performed ethically and successfully. We also discussed how global health programs have historically been influenced by larger political/neoliberal influences (i.e. tropical medicine being rooted in colonialism/racism). Knowing the historical issues and challenges of global health programs has led me to analyze public and global health programs more critically.
This online course on medical sociology featured weekly discussions on topics including health inequity across lines of race, gender, and class in different countries. Global health topics such as sanitation, malnutrition, and health care models were covered. The course emphasized the importance of looking at social and environmental contexts of illness, as well as attitudes towards different illnesses (i.e. mental illness). Definitions of illness (i.e. is disability an illness) were also discussed. As a potential medical professional in the future, I found the course’s discussion of power dynamics within the medical profession (i.e. doctors’ perceived authority) particularly insightful.
In this class, we discussed applications of microeconomics and macroeconomics concepts to global health care systems. We discussed and compared economic features of different health care models (i.e. Bismarck, Beveridge), as well as their respective influences on the supply and demand of health care. Our comparisons of health care models from an economic perspective provided a deeper insight on the pros and cons of different private and public health care models globally, making it directly relevant to my concentration of Health & Wellness.
This course provided an overview of terminology and topics in epidemiology relevant to public health and public health research. Determinants of disease and different study designs were also discussed. Learning how to calculate measures such as prevalence, incidence, relative risk, and odds ratios has been helpful in understanding publications in public/global health research.