Curricular Models and Learning Objectives for Undergraduate Minors in Global Health

Abstract

Introduction A diversity of colleges and universities in the United States now offer undergraduate majors and minors in public health, global health, and other areas related to population health [1]. While several recent papers have described undergraduate global health programs at selected sets of institutions [2-5], and enumerated the graduate global health programs in North America [6, 7], no previous papers have attempted to systematically identify and characterize all of the undergraduate global health education programs in the United States. The Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) pools expertise from 185 member institutions to support global health training, research, practice, and advocacy. One of the goals of CUGH is to support excellence in global health education by developing resources for curriculum design, teaching, and learning. A working group within CUGH that represented diverse institutions and disciplinary backgrounds sought to identify all undergraduate educational programs in global health being offered during the 2019-20 academic year. Minors were the most commonly offered global health programs at the undergraduate level [1], so we categorized the curricula being used by minors, evaluated the content of required foundational courses, and examined the types of applied learning experiences that are required. This paper presents the results of this systematic process and the related recommendations for undergraduate global health learning. Methods We acquired a list of all 4324 colleges and universities that were included in the 2018 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education (version 7, released 24 May 2019) produced by the Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research. Of these schools, 2486 award bachelor's degrees. We searched the website of each of these 4-year institutions during the 2019-2020 academic year to determine whether the school appeared to offer a major, minor, concentration, field, certificate, or other program in global health or a closely related field. Many schools provide a list of majors and minors in an easily accessible location on their websites. When we were unable to locate such a list, we consulted the school catalog or

Global health education for the post-pandemic years: parity, people, planet, priorities, and practices

“…The 10 CUGH learning objectives can be used to illustrate the core content for each of the 4 poles of the 5 Ps model [ 7 ]. “People” includes the social, economic, cultural, and political contributors to health as well as the financing and delivery of medical care for individuals and communities.…”

“…Public health courses cover many aspects of the “people” dimension, with global public health courses examining these in international context rather than maintaining a predominantly domestic focus. In multidisciplinary global health programs, especially those at the baccalaureate level, this curricular area often includes coursework in medical anthropology, health economics, health psychology, and other social science fields [ 7 ]. The most robust “people”-oriented courses include content from countries across the income spectrum rather than focusing solely on health in lower-income countries and disadvantaged populations.…”

“…Current coursework related to this domain typically focuses on global health systems and policies [ 4 ]. Most global health education programs also require some training in epidemiology, statistics, and research methods [ 4 , 7 ]. The pandemic may increase demand for courses on comparative health metrics and other data science applications that facilitate decision-making [ 31 ].…”

“…Most of the global health learning objectives and competencies developed by professional organizations in various world regions over the past decade express similar themes [ 15 , 16 ], and most of the curricula for global health degree programs at all levels in various countries align with those educational models. For example, we have observed similar trends in the content of introductory undergraduate courses in global health [ 7 ] and the content of master’s level curricula in global health in North America [ 4 ]. (There is less consistency in how global health education is conceptualized by programs that engage with global health within the context of professional education.)…”

“…(By contrast, clinical education programs, such as those in medicine and nursing, typically require little or no formal coursework and instead engage with global health almost exclusively through applied practice experiences in international settings.) We also contributed to the development of a set of 10 CUGH-recommended student learning objectives in global health that align with existing competency models and the most frequently occurring elements of existing academic global health curricula (Table 1 ) [ 7 ]. The learning objectives were vetted by global health educators in several world regions prior to publication in order to confirm that they had international relevance even though they originated from an organization based in North America.…”