Proposal for a Two-Semester Undergraduate Course on Public Health Disparities and the Community

The potential for a liberal arts education to inform and inspire a new generation of public health leaders is extraordinary. Tapping into a surge of interest in public health on college campuses, Richard Aronson, MD, MPH, is exploring innovative strategies to teach, mentor, and facilitate learning that is rooted in knowledge and experience in the social determinants of health, health equity, and the life course perspective. Through his current position as Assistant Adjunct Professor of Public Health at Hampshire College, he hopes to make this liberal arts approach to public health and health inequality come alive. The Five College Culture, Health, and Science Program and the new Amherst College Public Health Collaborative are two great resources for this work, as well as the Amherst Center for Community Engagement and its counterparts in the Five College community. In this way, the Humane Worlds Center for Maternal and Child Health could find its home. Dr. Aronson welcomes comments on the following draft proposal for a two-semester undergraduate course that would form the core for such a program:

Public health faces challenges that require multi-faceted inter-disciplinary approaches that are rooted in community based learning. Such learning addresses root causes of health disparities and the complex process of respecting the language and culture of diverse communities. The purpose of such learning, which lies at the heart of a liberal arts education, is to equip students with knowledge, critical thinking, and experience to create a more humane and just world. To achieve this purpose, students need to understand, in theory and practice, how broad and equal participation of many stakeholders and collaboration is central to the mission of public health.

We propose a two-semester course at Hampshire College, with vibrant Five-College and Culture, Health, and Science Program participation, which integrates the knowledge of public health disparities with community-based learning and practice. The course will draw on research that shows 1) How various forms of inequality, injustice, and stress influence health and create unconscionable health inequalities, 2) How resilience and other positive resources in people, families, communities, and systems provide the potential to create health equity, and 3) How inclusive dialogue, collaborative action, and cultural and linguistic competence form the foundation for inclusive, community-rooted leadership. The course provides opportunities for inter-generational and multi-disciplinary dialogue, both in the classroom and in the community, to learn and experience such leadership.

First Semester: A series of seminars, lectures, papers, group work, and presentations in the first semester sets the foundation for the second semester of community engagement. These conversations, rooted in discovery of inter-disciplinary topics and approaches to health disparities, seek to move students to listen inclusively and respectfully to diverse stakeholders; to learn to honor the people whom we serve, especially those whose voices have been stifled and excluded; and to learn to theories for how to put into practice the reality that expertise is not defined by the titles or degrees after one’s name, but by the unique gifts and skills that people bring to bear to make the world better.

Second Semester: The second semester would have a smaller class size of about ten. It provides the student with an opportunity to engage with community partners in a project that is of mutual benefit to the student and the community. It provides students with 1. Experience in inter-disciplinary and collaborative group work that is central to public health, and that makes public health exciting and fruitful. 2. An opportunity to synthesize classroom knowledge and personal experience to explore in depth a specific public health disparity in a local community/ 3. A chance to explore ways that active involvement to address a public health issue can have an impact on health disparities; and begin to develop personal long-term strategies for creating social change for health.

Prerequisites: Students who take the course should demonstrate potential to be curious about, to understand, and to want to actively improve the health of communities; and to partner with multiple, diverse people from all walks of life.

Principles: Some of the underlying principles of the course are the following:

1. Involvement of community partners in a variety of forms is integral to all aspects of the course, at every stage.
2. The commitment of the course faculty is long-term. It extends beyond one academic year to a series of actions and activities, such as summer internships and annual orientations, to ensure continuity of the commitment to a sustained partnership between the school(s) and the local communities.
3. While one faculty member would run the course as a whole and assume chief responsibility for mentoring and teaching, drawing upon and involving other faculty, such as CHS, from the Five Colleges is an important part of the overall approach to the course.
4. Ongoing evaluation and learning lessons are used to refine, revise, and strengthen the course and the partnerships that develop.

This course seeks to offer a small-scale model for the application of community-based learning within the context of liberal arts education in public health. It seeks to unite students with community stakeholders and serve as a catalyst for essential but previously unlikely partnerships. Its ultimate purpose is to harness the ideals of a liberal arts education to the challenge of enabling people to discover common ground for new action to improve the conditions that influence the health of people and populations and reduce the inequities among them. Such action can lay the foundation for leadership needed to bring dignity, hope, and equity to people. We seek to move away from systems that thrive on pathology, medical diagnosis, and risk reduction. Instead, we envision systems and policies that derive their power from resilience, trust, respect of culture and language, and community. Our species has a remarkable capacity for healing and cooperating for the common good. The purpose of the course is to mobilize that capacity. The course will be a learning greenhouse to support educational methods that engage communities and inspire students to practice effective forms of social action. In so doing, the course can contribute to bringing up a new generation of leaders with lifelong tools to actualize their ideals.

Examples of course content:
1. Teaching, mentoring, advising, dialogue, organizing, advocating, and experience to learn and practice public health in the community.
2. Synthesizing research on social determinants of health, resilience, traumatic childhood experiences, racism, chronic stress, language, and conditions for productive dialogue that will have a significant impact on future public health practice.
3. Translating this research into humane public health practice to improve the health of women and children and families, with systems that honor families, communities, and cultures.
4. Integrating cultural understanding and respect as a key strategy to end health disparities.
5. Changing the language of public health and medicine to better reflect our ideals and purpose.
6. Bringing multiple stakeholders together to untangle complex public health challenges and take collaborative action to solve them.