The Educated Citizen and Public Health

2007 Public Health and Liberal Education Faculty
Development Workshop

In 2007, the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research (APTR) held a workshop on “Public Health and Liberal Education” to help faculty members from colleges and universities without public health schools or programs to design and teach foundational public health courses as part of an undergraduate general education curriculum.  During the summer of 2007, faculty members from
thirty-nine institutions attended the workshop, which provided an introduction to a public health perspective on liberal learning. The workshop gave faculty the opportunity to intensively explore curricular frameworks for three recommended public health courses: Introduction to Public Health (Public Health 101); Introduction to Epidemiology (Epidemiology 101); and Introduction to Global Health (Global Health 101). 

Courses

For more information on Public Health courses, see the Recommendations for Undergraduate Public Health (pdf).

Public Health 101
Over the past several years, many undergraduate schools have developed an introductory course in Public Health in order to expose students to the core issues of public health.  Although the course content varies on every campus, most of the courses introduce students to all or some of the core health topics such as: biostatistics; epidemiology; environmental and occupational health; behavioral health; health policy and administration; maternal and child health and ethics. 

Epidemiology 101
The study of epidemiology teaches the methods, ethics, and applications of the scientific method.  It provides a vehicle for rigorously linking the concerns of the natural and social sciences, thus enriching understanding of public policy and other population-based disciplines.  Epidemiology is the basic science of disease prevention.  Its ability to teach students to understand the scientific method, to develop and test hypotheses from data, and to draw analytical conclusions provides key elements of scientific education taught as part of general education.  Epidemiology can also be taught as a laboratory science with formal laboratory exercises.

For additional information about Public Health 101 and Epidemiology 101, please see Reports and Recommendations from the Working Groups of the Consensus Conference on Undergraduate Public Health Education (doc).

Global Health 101
Global health is increasingly becoming a cross-cutting interdisciplinary field integrating social and behavioral sciences. Course work in global health can be taught using a curriculum framework that includes the health-development link; health systems and their impacts on health; culture and health; human rights, ethics and global health; the burden of disease; and global institutions and cooperation to improve global health. Global health curriculum provides an opportunity to teach public health principles that illustrate global dependency as a contemporary and enduring real world issue as advocated by the LEAP program.

Faculty

Public Health 101--Richard Riegelman, MD, PhD
Richard Riegelman is Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at The George Washington University, and also holds appointments in Medicine and in Health Policy. As the Founding Dean of The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, he expanded training opportunities at the School to include a number of doctoral and joint degree programs, created new research centers and launched initiatives in long-term care, health law and policy, health services research, community-oriented primary care, health information systems, health communications and distance education. He also led the development of the School's undergraduate major in public health, which has been offered since 2003.  In 2005, Dr. Riegelman won the Duncan Clark award from the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine for his contributions to the field.

Epidemiology 101--Mark Kaelin, EdD
Mark Kaelin is an Associate Professor in the College of Education and Human Services at Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey, where he teaches courses in epidemiology, environmental health, and drug policy. He also serves on the College Board's Young Epidemiology Scholars Working Group on High School Epidemiology Curriculum, where he works with epidemiologists and high school teachers developing curriculum materials to develop high school students' understanding of basic epidemiologic concepts.

Global Health 101--Victor Barbiero, PhD
Victor Barbiero is a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health at The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services.  Until his retirement in 2005, he was Chief of the Implementation Support Division in the U.S. Agency for International Development's Office of HIV/AIDS. He has worked in India and East Africa.  Dr. Barbiero has also served as chief of USAID's Child Survival Division, where he provided strategic input to major technical efforts on childhood illness, micronutrient sufficiency and applied research. He has earned USAID's Meritorious Honor Award three times.