Skip to main content

General Catalog 2018–19    Catalog of Record 

Global Health Program

[ courses ]

Social Science Building, Second Floor
http://globalhealthprogram.ucsd.edu

All courses, faculty listings, and curricular and degree requirements described herein are subject to change or deletion without notice.

Global health is at once an increasingly popular new field of study, an urgent social concern, and a powerful interdisciplinary intellectual synthesis aimed at understanding and productively intervening in processes of health, illness, and healing across the globe. Two senses of the term global structure the program’s curriculum: The first defines a geographical space that is planetary and international; the second is an intellectual scope that is holistic and interdisciplinary. Undergraduate degrees in the Global Health Program (BA and minor) are designed to provide students with an in-depth understanding of factors related to illness, health, and healing from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective that transcends national borders and regional interests and takes cultural difference and cross-cultural diversity fully into account. Global health is directly concerned with achieving equity in health for people worldwide. It is a synthesis of population-based prevention, individual-level clinical care, health policy and program development, and cross-cultural understanding of variations and commonalities in the experiences with and causes of illness, the process of becoming and staying well, and the practices of healing. 

The Global Health Program covers a wide range of topics, including health care, health education, environmental effects on health, infectious disease, mental health, health inequalities, medical sequelae of natural disaster or political violence, indigenous healing practices, nutrition, and reproductive health. The program’s degrees are designed to be intellectually comprehensive, integrating the social sciences, biological sciences, and humanities. In addition, they combine academic and experiential learning, as well as strike a pedagogical balance between the acquisition of hard skills, theory, and real-world knowledge. An important feature of the program is a Global Health Field Experience at a research, service, or clinical site either in the United States or abroad, which for majors culminates in a capstone seminar and senior thesis. This program of study helps to prepare students for a career in research and teaching, immigrant service-providing organizations, government agencies, health sciences, or law. The unique research and writing opportunities offered by this minor also make it an excellent preparation for medical and graduate school.

The Bachelor of Arts in Global Health

All courses applied to the major must receive a letter grade of C– or better. The major will require nine core courses, the primary function of which is to ground all students in the hard skills, analytic tools, and fluency in the debates expected of someone with an expertise in global health.

I. Lower Division Core Requirements:
(twelve units/three courses)

All students will take the following:

One of the following introduction courses:

One of the following courses:

One statistics course:

II. Upper-Division Core Requirements:
(twenty-four units/six courses)

All students will take the following:

One course in policy analysis:

To be taken senior year:

In their senior year, graduating students will participate in a two-quarter seminar open only to Global Health majors. The seminar will reflect the unique resources of UC San Diego’s college system by treating the relation between global health and each of the themes highlighted by the colleges: international relations, environmentalism, law/ethics, technology, humanities, and public service. The seminar will also provide an opportunity to expand, deepen, and share the insights of their Global Health Field Experience with members of their cohort. The first quarter will consist of intensive reading and discussion in fields related to each student’s primary interest and building on their field experience. The second quarter will be a workshop with critical input from all participants focused on preparing a senior thesis that will provide an important credential for students in the next stage of their careers and as they prepare applications for graduate academic or professional training. A capstone conference in the spring quarter of each year will assemble all Global Health majors and minors and be open to the campus community. The conference will feature a guest speaker with a distinguished reputation in global health along with presentations of theses by graduating participants in the BA Global Health. (Students must complete their Global Health Field Experience requirement prior to enrollment in the senior capstone.)

III. Field Experience Requirement:

The Field Experience project will be carried out at a research, service, or clinical site either in the United States or abroad. Field Experience will be approved by the Advisory Committee, along with the Study Abroad UC San Diego office (for international placements) and Academic Internship Program (for domestic placements). The project will focus on issues relevant to global health, including health care, health education, environmental effects on health, infectious disease, mental health, health disparities, medical sequelae of natural disaster or political violence, indigenous healing practices, nutrition, and reproductive health. In accord with the campus’s Education Initiative, the Global Health Field Experience will enhance knowledge, skills, and sensitivities, thus engaging “mind, hands, and heart” to create a learning outcome that is scientific, pragmatic, and humanistic.

Field Experience Requirement:
The Field Experience must meet the following criteria:
Credit-bearing field experience:

Upon approval by petition, a student may enroll in a maximum of two Independent Study (GLBH 199) or Directed Group Study (GLBH 198) courses under mentorship of an affiliated faculty member. This will provide academic credit for the noncredit-bearing Field Experience, through required readings, reflective journals, papers, etc., as determined by agreement between the student and faculty member. The academic result will be to place their Field Experience in the context of the interdisciplinary scholarly literature on global health. When credit is granted either through the program itself or through our GLBH Independent Study/Directed Group Study, this credit will count as an elective toward the major.

IV. Electives:

There are eight required electives. Six of these must be upper division. The elective requirement is designed to reinforce the interdisciplinary character of the field of global health. Students must have course work across the major disciplines, including one in ethics and another in global processes. Not all courses are taught every year.

Biological Sciences:

(Choose three.)

Lower Division:

Upper Division: (prerequisites listed in parentheses)

Medical Social Sciences:

(Choose three; prerequisites listed in parenthesis.)

Anthropology

Communication

Economics

Ethnic Studies

Family Medicine and Public Health

Global Health

Latin American Studies

Political Science

Psychology

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Sociology

Urban Studies and Planning

Medical Humanities:

(One course)

Anthropology

Critical Gender Studies

History

Literature

Philosophy

Global Processes:

(One course)

Anthropology

Communication

Critical Gender Studies

Ethnic Studies

Latin American Studies

Political Science

Sociology

The Global Health Minor

The Global Health minor covers a wide range of topics relevant to global health including health care, health education, environmental effects on health, infectious disease, mental health, health inequalities, medical sequelae of natural disaster or political violence, indigenous healing practices, nutrition, and reproductive health. This program of study helps to prepare students for a career in research and teaching, immigrant service-providing organizations, government agencies, health sciences, or law. The unique research and writing opportunities offered by this minor also make it an excellent preparation for medical and graduate school.

The minor consists of a total of seven courses (twenty-eight units), at least five of which must be upper-division courses. All courses applied to the minor must receive a letter grade of C– or better.

1) Required Core Courses

All students will take the following required courses, which will introduce them to the field of global health from the dual perspective of public health and the health sciences on the one hand and the medical social sciences on the other.

Choose one of the following courses:
Choose two of the following courses:

2) Health-Related Biological Science

All students will take at least one biological science course relevant to global health, selected from the approved list of electives for the minor:

Lower Division:
Upper Division: (prerequisites listed in parentheses)

Taking any of these courses to fill this requirement of the minor does not preclude a student from taking another course in this list as an elective for the minor.

3) Global Health Minor Field Experience (Optional)

Global Health minors may choose to complete a 100-hour Global Health Field Experience Requirement to complement their course work.

The Field Experience project will be carried out at a research, service or clinical site either in the United States or abroad. Field Experience will be approved by the advisory committee, along with the Study Abroad UC San Diego office (for international placements) and Academic Internship Program (for domestic placements). The project will focus on issues relevant to global health, including health care, health education, environmental effects on health, infectious disease, mental health, health disparities, medical sequelae of natural disaster or political violence, indigenous healing practices, nutrition, and reproductive health. In accord with the campus’s Education Initiative, the Global Health Field Experience component will enhance knowledge, skills, and sensitivities, thus engaging “mind, hands, and heart” to create a learning outcome that is scientific, pragmatic, and humanistic.

Field Experience Requirement

The Field Experience must meet the following criteria:

Credit-bearing field experience:
Upon approval by petition, a student may enroll in a maximum of two Independent Study (GLBH 199) or Directed Group Study (GLBH 198) courses under mentorship of an affiliated faculty member. This will provide academic credit for the noncredit-bearing Field Experience through required readings, reflective journals, papers, etc., as determined by agreement between the student and faculty member. The academic result will be to place their Field Experience in the context of the interdisciplinary scholarly literature on global health. When credit is granted either through the program itself or through our GLBH Independent Study/Directed Group study, this credit will count as an elective toward the minor.

4) Elective Course Work

Students will complete three elective courses from the following list:

ANSC 101. Aging: Culture and Health in Late Life Human Development

ANSC 105. Global Health and Inequality

ANSC 106. Global Health: Indigenous Medicines in Latin America

ANSC 121. Psychological Anthropology

ANSC 129. Religion and Healing

ANSC 143. Mental Health as Global Health Priority

ANSC 144. Immigrant and Refugee Health

ANSC 146. A Global Health Perspective on HIV

ANSC 147. Global Health and the Environment

ANSC 149. Gender and Mental Health

ANSC 150. Culture and Mental Health

ANSC 155. Humanitarian Aid: What Is It Good For?

ANSC 156. Mad Films

ANSC 164. Introduction to Medical Anthropology

ANSC 182. Gun Violence as Social Pathology

CGS 111. Gender and the Body

COMM 114J. CSI: Food Justice

COMM 167. Reproductive Discourse and Gender

ECON 140. Economics of Health Producers

ECON 141. Economics of Health Consumers

ETHN 142. Medicine, Race, and the Global Politics of Inequality

FPMH 110. Health Behavior and Chronic Diseases

GLBH 100. Special Topics in Global Health

GLBH 148. Global Health and Cultural Diversity (if not taken for core course)

GLBH 160. Global Health Policy

GLBH 181. Essentials of Global Health (if not taken for core course)

GLBH 198. Directed Group Study

GLBH 199. Independent Study in Global Health Field Experience

HISC 108. Life Sciences in the Twentieth Century

HISC 109. Invention of Tropical Disease

HISC 115. History of Modern Medicine

HISC 116. History of Bioethics

HISC 117. History of Neuroscience

HISC 176. History of Medicine in East and Southeast Asia

LATI 122A. Field Research Methods for Migration Studies: Seminar

LTCS 155. Health and Illness in Global Culture

LTCS 165. The Politics of Food

LTWL 177. Literature and Aging

MGT 173. Project Management: Health Services (if not taken for core course)

PHIL 150. Philosophy of the Cognitive Sciences

PHIL 163. Biomedical Ethics

PHIL 164. Technology and Human Values

PHIL 173. Topics in Bioethics

PSYC 100. Clinical Psychology

PSYC 101. Developmental Psychology

PSYC 116. Laboratory in Clinical Psychology Research

PSYC 124. Clinical Assessment and Treatment

PSYC 125. Clinical Neuropsychology

PSYC 134. Eating Disorders

PSYC 143. Control and Analysis of Human Behavior

PSYC 155. Social Psychology and Medicine

PSYC 168. Psychological Disorders of Childhood

PSYC 172. Psychology of Human Sexuality

PSYC 179. Drugs, Addiction, and Mental Disorders

PSYC 181. Drugs and Behavior

PSYC 188. Impulse and Control Disorders

REV 160 and 165 GS. Public Health and Epidemiology I and II

SOCI 113. Sociology of the AIDS Epidemic

SOCI 134. The Making of Modern Medicine

SOCI 135. Medical Sociology

SOCI 136E. Sociology of Mental Illness: An Historical Approach

SOCI 136F. Sociology of Mental Illness in Contemporary Society

SOCI 138. Genetics and Society

SOCI 143. Suicide

SOCI 173. Sociology of Health, Illness, and Medicine

SIO 189. Pollution, Environment, and Health

TWS 198. Contemporary Issues in Global Health

USP 143. The US Healthcare System

USP 144. Environmental and Preventive Health Issues

USP 145. Aging: Social and Health Policy Issues

USP 147. Case Studies in Health Care Programs/Poor and Underserved Population