Public Health 101 Nanocourse: A Condensed Educational Tool for Non–Public Health Professionals

摘要

Graduate students and postdoctoral fellows—including those at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH)—have somewhat limited opportunities outside of traditional coursework to learn holistically about public health. Because this lack of familiarity could be a barrier to fruitful collaboration across disciplines, HSPH postdocs sought to address this challenge. In response, the Public Health 101 Nanocourse was developed to provide an overview of five core areas of public health (biostatistics, environmental health sciences, epidemiology, health policy and management, and social and behavioral sciences) in a two half-day course format. We present our experiences with developing and launching this novel approach to acquainting wider multidisciplinary audiences with the field of public health. Graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty without direct training in public health often have limited opportunities to gain a basic understanding of the multiple areas of study within public health and the role each plays in improving health. 1–4 We saw this as an opportunity to provide an introduction to the field of public health for the full Harvard academic community, not just trainees. The two-session Public Health 101 Nanocourse was launched in October 2013 to provide an overview of the five core areas of public health: biostatistics, environmental health sciences, epidemiology, health policy and management, and social and behavioral sciences. 5,6 The first session featured a brief historical overview of milestones in the study of public health, focusing in particular on various epidemiological study designs (epidemiology and biostatistics), health behavior intervention research (social and behavioral sciences), and the built environment and health (environmental health). A health policy and management case-based teaching approach was used in the second session to integrate the skills and knowledge gained in the first session.