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380.604.01
Life Course Perspectives on Health

Location
East Baltimore
Note: Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, this course was held in a virtual/online format.
Term
1st Term
Department
Population, Family and Reproductive Health
Credit(s)
4
Academic Year
2020 - 2021
Instruction Method
TBD
Class Time(s)
M, W, 1:30 - 3:20pm
Auditors Allowed
No
Available to Undergraduate
Yes
Grading Restriction
Letter Grade or Pass/Fail
Contact Name
Frequency Schedule
Every Year
Description
Teaches students to frame public health issues using a multilevel, life course perspective. Provides a conceptual framework with which to understand the development of health over time and the interrelated effects of biological, psychological, and social factors on health. Elaborates and illustrates the framework by considering health in specific life stages, highlighting multilevel, life course influences on health, processes by which social influences “get under the skin”, and multilevel, life course approaches to research and practice. Students create a conceptual framework illustrating the application of the framework to a public health outcome their choice.
Learning Objectives
Upon successfully completing this course, students will be able to:
  1. Explain the life course approach to understanding population health
  2. Explain the social, political and economic determinants of population health over the life course
  3. Discuss the means by which structural bias, social inequities and racism undermine health and create challenges to achieving health equity
  4. Describe the psychological and behavioral factors that affect a population’s health over the life course
  5. Explain how societal, behavioral, psychological factors interact with biological and genetic factors to affect population health over the life course
  6. Describe how a multilevel life course perspective integrates societal, behavioral, psychological and biological determinants of health over the life course
  7. Create a conceptual framework that communicates a multilevel life course perspective on a specific public health outcome
  8. Assess the advantages and challenges of applying a multilevel life course perspective on health in public health research and practice
Methods of Assessment
This course is evaluated as follows:
  • 25% Assignments
  • 25% Participation
  • 50% Conceptual framework illustrating a multilevel, life course perspective on a public health outcome (four assignments)
Special Comments

Students must have instructor's permission to enroll in the class after the first week of the term.