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Schulich - Global Health

Academic Courses

Global Health - ICE Module (4th Year)

This course will provide students with a forum to explore health and its global determinants. Students will develop an appreciation for the complexity of global health issues, especially in low-resource settings, and be able to identify sources of information concerning global health topics. They should be able to articulate the role of physicians as advocates for improving the health of patients and populations in their communities and around the world. The course is meant to go beyond topics covered in the first two years of community health, as well as those addressed in pre-departure training. It will highlight how global political and social systems might impact on human health and how physicians can make a difference at local and global levels addressing direct and structural violence. There is no pre-requisite to taking this course.

There will be 4 three-hour sessions. Each of the three hour sessions will be divided in two: one and a half hours each. Each session will begin with a 30-minute faculty or student-run presentation, followed possibly by a 30-minute (live or by WIMBA) relevant guest speaker and 20 minutes for group discussion. Each student is expected to contribute to the general discussion at each session. Depending on the preference in Windsor, similar groups could take place there or we could videoconference or conference all sessions. Content will vary from year to year depending on class preferences. The class will help choose 7 of 14 topics in January, through a brief survey. We will then form student groups to address each topic. You may choose to purchase books depending on your topic. For the week you are presenting, you will be expected to do 6 hours of preparation with the resources in association with each topic. Therefore, you might spend about 12-24 hours reading, preparing and presenting beyond the 12 hours for class attendance. Thus the total credit is for 24 hours (ie. 12 hours beyond class time).

Global Health Ecohealth

This course was taught in 2009-2010 to first and second-year students.

The Global Health/Ecosystem Health component of Community Health provides students with a forum to look at the larger issues in the world that will impact their health and the health of their patients. Underlying the course design is the ecosystem health model. Ecosystem Health looks at the interaction of human health with the physical, economic, political and social health of the world in which we live. The goal of Ecosystem Health was to provide medical students with the knowledge necessary to provide information on the environment and its impact on individual and family health. While patients remain central, the scope was beyond the Patient Disease Illness model to the context: the health of the home in which they live, their community, their geographic region and country and about the planet.

These courses provides students with the basic knowledge to integrate the effect of global and regional issues on the health of their patients, and to understand what the impact of health care can be on the health of the community, the country and the planet.