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Teaching global public health in the undergraduate liberal arts: a survey of 50 colleges.

ABSTRACT: Undergraduate public health and global health studies are usually found at universities with graduate programs in the disciplines. Following the experience of teaching a short course in global health within the liberal arts, we reviewed global and public health offerings at 50 liberal arts colleges for the 2009-2010 academic year. Forty-two percent had a track, concentration, or program, and 30% had global or public health student organizations. All colleges listed at least one course in the fields, with the highest number in the social sciences. However, many colleges had not coordinated them into a theme. Values of a liberal arts education are found in the study of global and public health: social responsibility, critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and knowledge of the wider world. We propose identifying these programs within the undergraduate liberal arts as global public health. Capturing interest in global public health will enhance the curriculum and student experience.In this day and age, when the world is so fluid with regard to news and information, the knowledge that unnecessary deaths are occurring and that health care lags so far behind in some regions cannot be ignored. From the standpoint of basic human rights, suffering and inequity cannot be tolerated. Williams College student during a global health short course.

SUBMITTER: Hill DR

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3391034 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Teaching global public health in the undergraduate liberal arts: a survey of 50 colleges.

Hill David R DR Ainsworth Robert M RM Partap Uttara U

The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene 20120701 1

Undergraduate public health and global health studies are usually found at universities with graduate programs in the disciplines. Following the experience of teaching a short course in global health within the liberal arts, we reviewed global and public health offerings at 50 liberal arts colleges for the 2009-2010 academic year. Forty-two percent had a track, concentration, or program, and 30% had global or public health student organizations. All colleges listed at least one course in the fie ...[more]

PMID: 22764284

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Project description:BACKGROUND:Dietary supplements (DS) are nutraceuticals that improve overall health and well-being of an individual as well as reduce the risk of diseases. Evidence indicates a rising prevalence of these products worldwide especially among college students. Studies have reported an increasing use of supplements among Saudi students. However, the scope of those researches was limited to prevalence data. Hence, the aim of our study was to document the prevalence, opinions, attitudes, reasons for use and monthly cost attributed to dietary supplement use. METHODS:A 3-month cross-sectional study was conducted to evaluate use of dietary supplement among health and non-health college students at a public-sector university in Dammam city, Saudi Arabia. It was conducted using Arabic version of the Dietary supplement questionnaire (DSQ-A). A total of 469 male students responded to the survey giving a response rate of 93.8%. The students were from ten colleges of the university. The data was analyzed by SPSS version 22. The study was approved by Institutional Review Board of Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia (IRB-UGS-2018-05-074). RESULTS:The overall prevalence of dietary supplement use in the university was 29.42%. In health cluster colleges, it was reported at 35.91% while in non-health cluster college it was 23.69%. Maintaining general health and well-being was the most common reason for use. Prevalence of multivitamins and whey proteins was approximately 23%. Average monthly cost of supplement was SAR 278.92 (USD 74.39). Cost was positively correlated (??=?0.305) with satisfaction score. Students preferred brand products (16.4%). 41.4% students opined that DS may prevent chronic illness if used regularly and agreed that they are good for health. Majority of students (65%) recommended DS use only upon physician's recommendation. College clusters and study-year was associated (p-value<?0.01) with students' opinion. Students in health cluster colleges were more likely to recommend supplements (OR 3.715, p-value<?0.0001). CONCLUSION:Prevalence of dietary supplement use was lower than other local and international university students. Health cluster colleges had higher prevalence as compared to non-health cluster colleges. Multivitamins and whey protein were the most commonly used types of DS. Students preferred brand products, had positive opinions and attitudes towards dietary supplement. However, they recommended supplements use to others only upon a physician's recommendation.

Project description:BackgroundThere is increasing interest in global health teaching among medical schools and their students. Schools in the UK and internationally are considering the best structure, methods and content of global health courses. Academic work in this area, however, has tended to either be normative (specifying what global health teaching ought to look like) or descriptive (of a particular intervention, new module, elective, etc.).MethodsWhile a number of studies have explored student perspectives on global health teaching, these have often relied on tools such as questionnaires that generate little in-depth evidence. This study instead used qualitative methods to explore medical student perspectives on global health in the context of a new global health module established in the core medical curriculum at a UK medical school.ResultsFifth year medical students participated in a structured focus group session and semi-structured interviews designed to explore their knowledge and learning about global health issues, as well as their wider perspectives on these issues and their relevance to professional development. While perspectives on global health ranged from global health 'advocate' to 'sceptic', all of the students acknowledged the challenges of prioritising global health within a busy curriculum.ConclusionsStudents are highly alert to the diverse epistemological issues that underpin global health. For some students, such interdisciplinarity is fundamental to understanding contemporary health and healthcare. For others, global health is merely a topic of geographic relevance. Furthermore, some students appeared to accept global health as a specialist area only relevant to professionals working overseas, while others considered it to be an essential part of working in the globalised world and therefore relevant to all medical professionals. Students also clearly noted that including 'soft' subjects and more discursive approaches to teaching and learning often sits awkwardly in a programme where 'harder' forms of knowledge and didactic methods tend to dominate. This suggests that more work needs to be done to explain the relevance of global health to medical students at the very beginning of their studies.

Project description:Although medical humanities courses taught by teachers from nonmedical backgrounds are not unusual now, few studies have compared the outcome of medical humanities courses facilitated by physicians to that by teaching assistants majored in the liberal arts. The objectives of this study were to (1) analyze the satisfaction of medical students with medical humanities problem-based learning (PBL) classes facilitated by nonmedical teaching assistants (TAF) majored in the liberal arts, and those facilitated by the attending physicians (APF) and (2) examine the satisfaction of medical students with clinical medicine-related and clinical medicine-unrelated medical humanities PBL classes.A total of 123 medical students, randomly assigned to 16 groups, participated in this study. There were 16 classes in the course: 8 of them were TAF classes; and the others were APF classes. Each week, each group rotated from 1 subject of the 16 subjects of PBL to another subject. All of the 16 groups went through all the 16 subjects in the 2013 spring semester. We examined the medical students' satisfaction with each class, based on a rating score collected after each class was completed, using a scale from 0 (the lowest satisfaction) to 100 (the highest satisfaction). We also conducted multivariate linear regression analysis to examine the association between the independent variables and the students' satisfaction.Medical students were more satisfied with the TAF (91.35 ± 7.75) medical humanities PBL classes than APF (90.40 ± 8.42) medical humanities PBL classes (P = 0.01). Moreover, medical students were more satisfied with the clinical medicine-unrelated topics (92.00 ± 7.10) than the clinical medicine-related topics (90.36 ± 7.99) in the medical humanities PBL course (P = 0.01).This medical humanities PBL course, including nonmedical subjects and topics, and nonmedical teaching assistants from the liberal arts as class facilitators, was satisfactory. This pedagogical approach of student-centered, nonmedical topics, nonmedical facilitators, and small groups, which is associated with a deep approach to learning medical humanities, should be highly encouraged.

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Teaching global public health in the undergraduate liberal arts: a survey of 50 colleges.

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Teaching global public health in the undergraduate liberal arts: a survey of 50 colleges.

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