SPPH 544: Social Determinants of Population Health in Industrialized Societies
Course Summary:
Population health has emerged as an important framework for thinking about factors affecting health in Canada and other developed nations. This course will build upon the tradition of “social medicine” within public health and epidemiology.
This course builds on the foundational ideas introduced about population health and determinants of health in SPPH 527: Introduction to the Determinants of Health. It is expected that this course will be of interest to students in diverse disciplinary areas, including students from graduate programs in the health sciences and the social sciences.
Course Objectives for Students:
- Understand how biological, proximal, neighbourhood, and socio-political factors influence health and development from the early years onward.
- Investigate the ways that social determinants and lifecourse perspectives are utilized in research, practice, and policy development.
- Understand how the arrangement of public policies in any state is itself an important social determinant of population well-being across different stages of the human lifecourse.