Twin Cities campus

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Twin Cities Campus

Public Health Minor

Geography, Environment, Society
Sociology
College of Liberal Arts
  • Program Type: Undergraduate free-standing minor
  • Requirements for this program are current for Fall 2012
  • Required credits in this minor: 14 to 16
Protecting the public's health requires addressing challenges that are influenced as much by individual and social behavior as they are by biology, chemistry, and physics. Biology, the environment, social and political systems, technology, and more intersect to describe the methods to protect the health and well-being of the population. Liberal arts students, and students from other colleges who complement their major degree programs with a public health minor, will understand how to help society by improving health and preventing disease on a population level.
Program Delivery
This program is available:
  • via classroom (the majority of instruction is face-to-face)
Minor Requirements
Specific program requirements are subject to change. Minors must follow the degree requirements current for the semester in which they declared.
Introduction to the Discipline
Take a minimum of two courses (4-6 credits). Note: PUBH 3004 is a 4-credit course that combines PUBH 3001 and PUBH 3003. If taking PUBH 3004, do not take PUBH 3001 or PUBH 3003. (PUBH 3004 satisfies half of the "Introduction to the Discipline" sub-requirement and all of the "Applying Public Health Theory" sub-requirement below.)
Part I
PUBH 3202 - What is Public Health? (2.0 cr)
or PUBH 3001 - Personal and Community Health (2.0 cr)
or PUBH 3004 {Inactive} (4.0 cr)
Part II
PUBH 3351 - Epidemiology: People, Places, and Disease (2.0 cr)
or PUBH 3106 - Making Sense of Health Studies (2.0 cr)
Understanding Health Issues From Varying Social Scientific Contexts
Take 6 or more credit(s) from the following:
· AFRO 4231 - Color of Public Policy: African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans & Chicanos in the U.S. (3.0 cr)
· ANTH 3306W - Medical Anthropology [GP, WI] (3.0 cr)
· ANTH 4075 - Cultural Histories of Healing [SOCS, GP] (3.0 cr)
· CNES 5535 {Inactive} (3.0 cr)
· CSCL 3350W - Sexuality and Culture [DSJ, WI] (3.0 cr)
· CSCL 3351W - The Body and the Politics of Representation [HIS, WI] (3.0 cr)
· ECON 5890 {Inactive} (3.0 cr)
· GEOG 3381W - Population in an Interacting World [SOCS, GP, WI] (3.0 cr)
· GEOG 3379 - Environment and Development in the Third World [SOCS, ENV] (3.0 cr)
· GEOG 3401W - Geography of Environmental Systems and Global Change [ENV, WI] (3.0 cr)
· GEOG 3411W - Geography of Health and Health Care [WI] (3.0 cr)
· GLOS 3613W - Stuffed and Starved: The Politics of Eating [SOCS, GP, WI] (3.0 cr)
· JOUR 5541 - Mass Communication and Public Health (3.0 cr)
· JOUR 5543 - Programs for Social Good: Design and Evaluation (3.0 cr)
· PHIL 3305 - Medical Ethics (4.0 cr)
· PSY 3206 - Introduction to Health Psychology (3.0 cr)
· PSY 5138 {Inactive} (3.0 cr)
· PSY 5205 - Applied Social Psychology (3.0 cr)
· PSY 5206 - Social Psychology and Health Behavior (3.0 cr)
· SOC 3501 - Sociology of Families [SOCS, DSJ] (3.0 cr)
· SOC 3511 - World Population Problems [GP] (3.0 cr)
· SOC 3681 - Gender and the Family in the Islamic World (3.0 cr)
· SOC 4246 - Sociology of Health and Illness (3.0 cr)
Applying Public Health Theory
Note: Students who take PUBH 3004 in fulfillment of the "Introduction to the Discipline" sub-requirement will also have fulfilled the "Applying Public Health Theory" sub-requirement.
Take 2 or more credit(s) from the following:
· FSCN 4614W - Community Nutrition [SOCS, DSJ, WI] (3.0 cr)
· PUBH 3003 - Fundamentals of Alcohol and Drug Abuse (2.0 cr)
· PUBH 3004 {Inactive} (4.0 cr)
· PUBH 3011 - Public Health Approaches to HIV/AIDS (2.0 cr)
· PUBH 3102 - Issues in Environmental and Occupational Health (3.0 cr)
· PUBH 3104 - Environmental Health Effects: Introduction to Toxicology (2.0 cr)
· PUBH 3639 {Inactive} (3.0 cr)
· PUBH 3801 - Health Economics and Policy (3.0 cr)
· PUBH 3905 {Inactive} (2.0 cr)
· PUBH 3940 {Inactive} (1.0 cr)
Global Impact
Take PUBH 3107, or another adviser-approved course, for a minimum of two credits. Offerings vary by semester; consult your minor adviser about current course options.
PUBH 3107 - Global Public Health and the Environment (2.0 cr)
 
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PUBH 3202 - What is Public Health?
Credits: 2.0 [max 2.0]
Grading Basis: OPT No Aud
Typically offered: Every Fall
Overview of public health: what it is, its origins, evolution, how it is structured/administered in the U.S. Mission, concepts, principles, and practices of population-based public health. Case studies. Career opportunities.
PUBH 3001 - Personal and Community Health
Credits: 2.0 [max 2.0]
Course Equivalencies: PubH 3001/PubH 3004/PubH 3005
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
Fundamental principles of health conservation and disease prevention.
PUBH 3351 - Epidemiology: People, Places, and Disease
Credits: 2.0 [max 2.0]
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
How diseases are distributed among us. Epidemiology terminology, methods, critical thinking, and analysis. Intended for students interested in a health science career or in a career that may need to evaluate epidemiologic evidence such as health journalism or public policy or litigation. prereq: Undergrad statistics course is recommended
PUBH 3106 - Making Sense of Health Studies
Credits: 2.0 [max 2.0]
Course Equivalencies: PubH 3106/PubH 6106
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
How to critically evaluate health news (and the health research reports on which they are based) to make good, well informed decisions about your health and well-being.
AFRO 4231 - Color of Public Policy: African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans & Chicanos in the U.S.
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies: AAS 4231/Afro 4231/AmIn 4231/C
Typically offered: Periodic Fall
Examination of structural or institutional conditions through which people of color have been marginalized in public policy. Critical evaluation of social theory in addressing the problem of contemporary communities of color in the United States.
ANTH 3306W - Medical Anthropology (GP, WI)
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
Relations among human affliction, health, healing, social institutions, and cultural representations cross-culturally. Human health/affliction. Medical knowledge/power. Healing. Body, international health, colonialism, and emerging diseases. Reproduction. Aging in a range of geographical settings. prereq: 1003 or 1005 or entry level soc sci course recommended
ANTH 4075 - Cultural Histories of Healing (SOCS, GP)
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Spring Even Year
Introduction to historically informed anthropology of healing practice. Shift to biologically based medicine in Europe, colonialist dissemination of biomedicine, political/cultural collisions between biomedicine and "ethnomedicines," traffic of healing practices in a transnationalist world.
CSCL 3350W - Sexuality and Culture (DSJ, WI)
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies: CSCL 3350W/GLBT 3456W
Typically offered: Periodic Fall & Spring
Historical/critical study of forms of modern sexuality (heterosexuality, homosexuality, romance, erotic domination, lynching). How discourses constitute/regulate sexuality. Scientific/scholarly literature, religious documents, fiction, personal narratives, films, advertisements.
CSCL 3351W - The Body and the Politics of Representation (HIS, WI)
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
Western representation of the human body, 1500 to present. Body's appearance as a site and sight for production of social and cultural difference (race, ethnicity, class, gender). Visual arts, literature, music, medical treatises, courtesy literature, erotica. (previously 3458W)
GEOG 3381W - Population in an Interacting World (SOCS, GP, WI)
Credits: 3.0 [max 4.0]
Course Equivalencies: Geog 3381W/GLOS 3701W
Typically offered: Every Fall, Spring & Summer
Comparative analysis and explanation of trends in fertility, mortality, internal and international migration in different parts of the world; world population problems; population policies; theories of population growth; impact of population growth on food supply and the environment.
GEOG 3379 - Environment and Development in the Third World (SOCS, ENV)
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies: Geog 3379/GloS 3303
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Every Spring
Inequality in the form of extreme wealth and poverty in our world are major causes of environmental degradation. In addition, development failure as well as certain forms of economic growth always led to environment disasters. This course examines how our world?s economic and political systems and the livelihoods they engender have produced catastrophic local and global environmental conditions. Beyond this, the course explores alternative approaches of achieving sustainable environment and equitable development. prereq: Soph or jr or sr
GEOG 3401W - Geography of Environmental Systems and Global Change (ENV, WI)
Credits: 3.0 [max 4.0]
Course Equivalencies: Geog 3401W/5401W
Typically offered: Every Spring
Geographic patterns, dynamics, and interactions of atmospheric, hydrospheric, geomorphic, pedologic, and biologic systems as context for human population, development, and resource use patterns.
GEOG 3411W - Geography of Health and Health Care (WI)
Credits: 3.0 [max 4.0]
Typically offered: Every Fall
Application of human ecology, spatial analysis, political economy, and other geographical approaches to analyze problems of health and health care. Topics include distribution and diffusion of disease; impact of environmental, demographic, and social change on health; distribution, accessibility, and utilization of health practitioners and facilities.
GLOS 3613W - Stuffed and Starved: The Politics of Eating (SOCS, GP, WI)
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies: GloS 3613W/GloS 3613V/Soc 3613
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Periodic Fall & Spring
This course takes a cross-cultural, historical, and transnational perspective to the study of the global food system. Themes explored include: different cultural and social meanings attached to food; social class and consumption; the global food economy; global food chains; work in the food sector; the alternative food movement; food justice; environmental consequences of food production.
JOUR 5541 - Mass Communication and Public Health
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies: Jour 5541/PubH 6074
Typically offered: Every Fall
This course provides an overview of theory and research that lies at the intersection of mass communication and public health. We examine the potential for media exposure to influence public health outcomes, both as a product of people's everyday interactions with media and the strategic use of media messages to accomplish public health goals. To this end, we will explore large-scale public health campaigns in the context of tobacco, obesity, and cancer screening. We also will explore news media coverage of controversial health issues, such as the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, and health information in entertainment media, such as smoking in movies. This course seeks to understand whether media messages have had intended and/or unintended effects on public attitudes and behavior. Although our focus is on mass media, interpersonal, medical, and digital media sources will be considered as well. prereq: JOUR 3005 or JOUR 3757 or Mass Communication grad
JOUR 5543 - Programs for Social Good: Design and Evaluation
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis: A-F only
Typically offered: Every Spring
Despite the amount of money spent on (and the faith placed in) campaigns and other programs for social good, we often cannot answer basic questions about how these programs worked and the impact they had. There are methodological, programmatic, practical, and political reasons for this?all of which we will address in this course. In so doing, we will identify the key components of program design and evaluation, drawing on examples from domains including the environment, public health, and social justice. The overarching goal of this course is to give students the skills they need to understand and assess the effectiveness of campaigns and other programs for social good, whether as consumers or producers of such content. prereq: [JOUR 3004 or 3004H], JOUR 3201, any 32xx skills course, Strat Comm major
PHIL 3305 - Medical Ethics
Credits: 4.0 [max 4.0]
Typically offered: Every Spring
Moral problems confronting physicians, patients, and others concerned with medical treatment, research, and public health policy. Topics include abortion, living wills, euthanasia, genetic engineering, informed consent, proxy decision-making, and allocation of medical resources.
PSY 3206 - Introduction to Health Psychology
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies: Madr 3206/Psy 3206
Typically offered: Every Spring
Theories/research in health psychology. Bi-directional relationships between psychological factors and physical health. Stress/coping, adjustment to chronic illness. Psychological factors in etiology/course of disease. Health behavior change. prereq: 1001
PSY 5205 - Applied Social Psychology
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered: Spring Odd Year
Applications of social psychology research/theory to domains such as physical/mental health, education, the media, desegregation, the legal system, energy conservation, public policy. prereq: 3201 or grad student or instr consent
PSY 5206 - Social Psychology and Health Behavior
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis: A-F only
Typically offered: Spring Odd Year
Survey of social psychological theory/research regarding the processes that shape people's beliefs about health and how these beliefs affect and are affected by their health behavior. Consideration of how theory and evidence regarding these processes informs the development and testing of intervention strategies to promote health behavior change. Prerequisite: Psy 3201
SOC 3501 - Sociology of Families (SOCS, DSJ)
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Fall Odd, Spring Even Year
Family has long been a significant experience in human societies; much of what we understand ourselves to be, arises in family life. But family also varies widely in composition across time and place. We will learn how sociologists study and understand families theoretically, as social institutions, as well as sites and sources of social problems. prereq: 1001 recommended; soc majors/minors must register A-F
SOC 3511 - World Population Problems (GP)
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies: Soc 3511/Soc 3511H
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Periodic Fall & Spring
This class is an introduction to the contemporary issues that accompany such dramatic population change, including fertility change, disease experiences, migration as opportunity and challenge and human-environment conflict. Further, we will examine the roles of global organizations, national governments, and culture in shaping and reshaping populations. prereq: [SOC 1001] recommended, Sociology majors/minors must register A-F
SOC 3681 - Gender and the Family in the Islamic World
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies: GloS 3681/GWSS 3681/RelS 3716/
Grading Basis: A-F only
Typically offered: Periodic Spring
This course explores the experiences of Muslim women and Muslim families from a historical and comparative perspective. Expanding the discussion on Muslim women's lives and experiences beyond the Middle East, by also centralizing on the experiences of Muslim women and families outside of this geographical area highlights the complex and diverse everyday experiences of Muslim women around the world. This wider lens exposes the limitations intrinsic in the stereotypical representation of Muslims in general and Muslim women in particular. We will explore the intricate web of gender and family power relations, and how these are contested and negotiated in these societies. Some of the themes the course explores include the debates on Muslim women and colonial representations, sexual politics, family, education and health, women and paid work, gender and human rights, and Islamic feminisms debates. prereq: At least soph; 1001 recommended
SOC 4246 - Sociology of Health and Illness
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis: A-F or Aud
Typically offered: Periodic Spring
This course is an introduction to the importance of health and illness in people’s lives, how social structures impact who gets sick, how they are treated, and how the delivery of health care is organized. By the end of the course you will be familiar with the major issues in the sociology of health and illness, and understand that health and illness are not just biological processes, but profoundly shaped by the organization of society. prereq: One sociology course recommended; soph or above; soc majors/minors must register A-F
FSCN 4614W - Community Nutrition (SOCS, DSJ, WI)
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis: A-F only
Typically offered: Every Spring
Nutrition risks associated with different age, sex, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. Community needs assessment. Program planning and evaluation. Programs developed to address the needs and interests of people at different stages of the life cycle, ethnic or cultural backgrounds, and literacy levels.
PUBH 3003 - Fundamentals of Alcohol and Drug Abuse
Credits: 2.0 [max 2.0]
Course Equivalencies: PubH 3003/PubH 3004/PubH 3005/
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
Scientific, sociocultural, and attitudinal aspects of alcohol and other drug abuse problems. Emphasizes incidence, high-risk populations, prevention, and intervention.
PUBH 3011 - Public Health Approaches to HIV/AIDS
Credits: 2.0 [max 2.0]
Course Equivalencies: PubH 3011/6011
Typically offered: Every Fall
Primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. Community responses to HIV/AIDS in Minnesota. Medical, social service, and political responses.
PUBH 3102 - Issues in Environmental and Occupational Health
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered: Every Fall & Spring
This course is an introduction to the field of Environmental and Occupational Health (EOH), the impact of environmental and occupational hazards on individuals and communities, the approaches taken to address EOH issues at the community level,and the challenges that must be overcome to ensure success in dealing with EOH issues. Students will review scientific literature to learn about interventions for environmental health problems, and practice identifying environmental health problems and interventions in their communities. The focus of this course will be on the interaction between humans and the environment and how this interaction affects human health. Online Course.
PUBH 3104 - Environmental Health Effects: Introduction to Toxicology
Credits: 2.0 [max 2.0]
Course Equivalencies: PubH 3104/PubH 6104
Typically offered: Every Spring
This course is designed for students who are interested in public health and environmental issues. Toxicology is a multidisciplinary experimental science that combines chemistry, biology, and physiology to determine whether substances we are exposed to in the environment are likely to harm our health. Students will learn how toxicology is used to understand how humans respond to chemicals in the environment. In addition, students will learn how toxicology is applied to protect human health through safety evaluation. prereq: Previous coursework in biology and chemistry; biochemistry is recommended. Ability to analyze data, and understand the basic functions of DNA, enzymes and other proteins, and lipids.
PUBH 3801 - Health Economics and Policy
Credits: 3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies: ApEc 3801/PubH 3801
Typically offered: Every Spring
Economics of health care markets. Problems faced by consumers/health care services. Builds on principles of supply/demand for health, health care/insurance, and role of government. Theoretical/empirical models/applications. prereq: Course on microeconomics, course on basic statistics
PUBH 3107 - Global Public Health and the Environment
Credits: 2.0 [max 2.0]
Grading Basis: A-F only
Typically offered: Every Fall
Environmental determinants of health and or well-being of populations. Role of environment in public health. Population burden of disease. Variation of environmental public health determinants across globe. Interconnectedness of activities and actions of people in different countries. prereq: public health minor, instr consent