Global Health and Population

The Department of Global Health and Population seeks to improve global health through education, research, and service from a population-based perspective.

The Twenty-first century has arrived with complex changes in demographic patterns, disease burdens, and health policies. These changes are affecting all societies, rich and poor, developed and developing. The department’s approach to these problems combines the analysis of population and health using quantitative and qualitative methods, the investigation of policies that affect health, and a concern with the politics and ethics of health and development.

The department’s members generate knowledge and ideas through their research, strengthen technical and leadership skills through educational programs, and enhance national capacities through collaborative projects, especially in the developing world. In their examination of global health and population issues, department faculty members draw on their disciplinary expertise in many areas: anthropology, biostatistics, demography, ecology, economics, epidemiology, ethics, medicine, political science, reproductive biology, and sociology. The department’s research interests span a wide spectrum of topics, including social and economic development, health policy, and demography; design and financing of health care systems; women’s health and children’s health; prevention and control of infectious and chronic diseases; and geographic information systems (GIS). The department has a special concern with questions of health equity and human rights, particularly in relation to health and population issues in developing countries.

Students in the department come with various backgrounds. Many students are from developing countries. All have an interest in the health of disadvantaged populations worldwide.

Degree Programs in Global Health and Population

As described below, the department offers both an 80-credit master of science (SM) program and a program leading to the doctor of science (SD) or doctor of public health (DPH) degree. For information on schoolwide requirements for master’s and doctoral degrees, see degree programs and requirements. In addition to these programs, the department hosts postdoctoral research fellows and mid career leaders in international health and undertakes cooperative research and intervention projects overseas.

Master of Science in Global Health and Population

This 80-credit academic program prepares students for a range of careers in global health and population or can serve as a foundation for further academic training. Some graduates go on to doctoral programs at Harvard and elsewhere and eventually to faculty positions in academic institutions. Other graduates have begun careers with foundations, while others work directly for international health and development agencies, for companies, and for nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations in the United States and worldwide. Applicants must hold a bachelor’s degree or equivalent in a relevant discipline. Many entering students already hold advanced degrees in medicine or a social science discipline. The admissions committee looks for candidates with strong quantitative skills (as demonstrated, for example, by good performance in college-level mathematics or statistics courses) and for those with relevant prior working experience in international health.

The course work for the SM degree emphasizes the acquisition of skills and concepts necessary to address a range of global population health issues. Of the necessary 80 credits, the required core courses make up roughly half, allowing considerable flexibility for students to tailor their own degree programs; 60 credits must be letter-grade credits, including a 5-credit required thesis. The remainder of the credits may be taken pass/fail.

In the first year of study, students focus on the core courses required by the school and the department. The foundation course on global health and population, offered in the first semester, is taken by all students and provides a common platform for the more advanced work that follows. There are approximately 35 required credits in the first year of study, including schoolwide requirements; courses in demography, population health measurement and risk factors, and ethics; and applied courses in politics and economics. In the summer after the first two semesters of instruction, students are expected to develop their ability to apply their skills and knowledge to contemporary problems in international health by undertaking an internship in the United States or abroad. Students often use this internship and the opportunities it provides to gather information for their thesis. In the WinterSession (January each year), many students join one of the faculty-directed field courses, which in recent years have included work in Pales tine, India, Bangladesh, China, and Chile.

The second year involves a combination of course work and independent study, some linked to the thesis. Individual contracts for independent study with faculty members in the school or the university are encouraged in this second year of study. Many students choose to take courses in other Harvard faculties such as the Kennedy School or the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Since students have fewer required courses in the second year, they can specialize in areas of their choice.

The instruction provided through courses, field visits, and individual or small-group teaching is largely based on the firsthand current research experience of the faculty, who work on a range of applied and theoretical problems in global health and population. The graduating student thus has a solid and up-to-date understanding of the major issues in population and global health; the tools to examine evidence related to program effectiveness, priority setting, and decision making; and insights into the practical aspects of undertaking population health interventions around the world, including a perspective on the economic, social, political, and ethical considerations that bear on these issues.

Doctor of Science in Global Health and Population/Doctor of Public Health

The doctoral programs are designed to prepare students both for professional leadership positions in the public or private sectors of public health and for academic careers in universities or research institutions. Recent graduates have taken positions with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Bank, and nongovernmental organizations and have assumed postdoctoral and teaching positions with universities in the United States and around the world.

Desired applicants have outstanding academic records, substantial relevant experience in the international public health arena, and professional interests relevant to the department. Applicants to the DPH program must have or be in progress toward an MPH and must also hold an advanced degree in a basic public health discipline. Though not required for the SD program, a master’s degree is strongly recommended. Students without sufficient training are encouraged to enter the department’s 80- credit master’s degree program and apply to enter the doctoral program at a later date. Entry to the doctoral program will then depend upon outstanding performance in the master’s degree program and acceptance through the regular doctoral program admission process.

In addition to schoolwide requirements in biostatistics and epidemiology, doctoral students must complete a common core of course work with a focus on global health. Core courses cover economics, ethics, politics, quantitative and qualitative methods, and population health measurement. The second year of the doctoral program usually involves both course work and research planning.

Applicants to the doctoral program must select one of three areas of interest currently offered by the department: economics, health systems, or population and reproductive health. The selected area becomes the student’s required major for the doctoral program. Although course requirements for a specific area of interest may be taken concurrently with the core, the majority of these will be taken during the second year of study. Students are also required to select two minor fields from the department or from allied departments of the school or university, including the HSPH Departments of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Nutrition, or Society, Human Development, and Health.

The three areas of interest offered by the department are described below:

Economics The economics area of interest is designed to give students a strong foundation in microeconomic theory and to develop their skills in applying economic analysis to global health and population issues. In addition to economic theory and econometrics, students will study recent empirical economic research related to global health and population. As well as courses at HSPH, students are expected to take advanced courses in economics in the Department of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and at the Kennedy School. The rigorous training provided in this area of interest, together with interdisciplinary training in other areas, will allow students to undertake their own research using economic models of behavior.

Research topics that might be pursued within the economics area of interest include the costs and benefits of public health interventions, the effect of poverty and social deprivation on health, the impact of health improvements on the economy, the effect of government regulation on market structures and private health care provision, mechanisms for developing new drugs and treatments, and the effect of family size on child poverty and health.

Health systems The health systems area of interest trains students to apply a multidisciplinary approach to advanced research on health care systems. The focus of this area is to develop new knowledge to improve the design, implementation, and evaluation of strategies to improve health and equity in middle- and lower-income countries through better health system performance. Through course work in economics, political science, political economy, and ethics, students will learn to integrate theories and methods from these disciplines and to apply them to the critical international health system issues of the day. This area of interest emphasizes evidence-based policy-making. Hence modeling and quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods are an integral part of the training.

Examples of health systems research topics include the factors involved in the relative performance of health systems; the design of systems to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and equity of health and health care; and the impacts on performance of reforms in financing, resource allocation, organization, incentives, and decentralization. Another research topic might be the behavior responses of consumers and providers when organization and incentives are changed.

Population and reproductive health The population and reproductive area prepares students for independent research on population health issues worldwide. Through required courses, seminars, and independent study, the area provides a solid foundation in the essential demographic, epidemiologic, and statistical concepts and methods needed for the analysis of levels, trends, and differentials in population health and its determinants. A key element of the training is grounding in methods for the measurement of fertility, mortality, and morbidity levels and their biological, environmental, and behavioral determinants, including health risk factors, all at the population level. Several courses illustrate the way in which methods and models based on demographic estimation techniques and epidemiologic relationships can be applied to new challenges in national, regional, and global burden of disease assessments. The training is strongly quantitative, with an emphasis on analytical techniques, but com petence in the application of qualitative methods and an understanding of the broader socioeconomic and anthropological theories of population health is also expected, depending on the dissertation topic.

Students within this area have recently written dissertations on such topics as HIV/ AIDS in Tanzania, gender-based violence and reproductive health in Jordan, risk factors for the global and national burden of chronic diseases, causes and consequences of induced abortion in Ghana, and intergenerational factors in child growth and health in rural Africa.

Postdoctoral Fellowships

The Takemi Program offers postdoctoral fellowships for professionals and scholars from around the world for research and advanced, interdisciplinary training on critical issues of international health, especially those related to developing countries. Takemi fellows are typically mid- to senior level health professionals who spend the year working on a particular research topic. The program addresses problems of mobilizing, allocating, and managing scarce resources to improve health, and of designing strategies for disease control and health promotion. The program does not provide funding. Applicants are encouraged to identify their own sources of support for the fellowship.

RELATED OFFERINGS

• MPH concentration in international health
• Interdisciplinary concentration in the epidemiology of infectious disease
• Interdisciplinary concentration in women, gender, and health

Contact Information

For general information about the Department of Global Health and Population, please contact the:

Department of Global Health and Population
665 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115.

Phone: 617-432-1232
Fax: 617-432-6733

For more information about master’s and doctoral programs in global health and population, please contact the Education Office, Department of Global Health and Population, at the address above, or visit the department website.

Phone: 617-432-2253
Fax: 617-432-6733
Email: ajaimung@hsph.harvard.edu
Web: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/departments/global-health-and-population/

For more information about the Takemi Program in International Health, please contact the:

Program Coordinator
Department of Global Health and Population
665 Huntington Avenue
Boston MA 02115

Or visit the program website.

Phone: 617-432-0686
Fax: 617-432-1251
Email: takemi@hsph.harvard.edu
Web: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/takemi