Courses and Schedules

SPPH 300 (Working in International Health) is a course on planning/preparing for work in low and middle income countries, concentrating on principles to guide ethical global health. In illustrating these principles, the course engages with basic information on the global burden of disease, its drivers and determinants, and interventions to improve health equity internationally. Health Science background is not essential. The course is restricted to Undergraduate students. SPPH 300 is designed to inspire and inform learners about working in global health. The course will predominantly be conducted with online didactic knowledge transfer and online interactivity with peers, the TAs, and the professors. Students will (with guidance) be expected to work in a cluster of students aggregated around similar interests to outline a particular project, from which they will apply the principles (inclusion, humility, attention to root causes, authentic partnerships, shared benefits and sustainability.) Grades will be based on a combination of the group work and individual assignments.

Sample Syllabus for Reference

SPPH 301 (previously SPPH 200)

This course reveals how the conditions in which we live and work can affect our health. Key concepts of social determinants of health in the population that are discussed include: poverty, economic resources, education, policy, neighbourhood conditions, early child development, and access to housing. This is an interactive and thought-provoking course that challenges traditional views on health and disease and allows students to reflect on their own experiences and backgrounds.

 Sample Syllabi for Reference:

Term 1 –  Syllabus

Term 2  –  Syllabus

This course will help future and current researchers, developers and health professionals understand how to integrate technology and best practices in both clinical and educational contexts.

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This course addresses ethical issues related to health at a population or community level and interventions undertaken by governments or other social organizations to promote it.

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The World Health Organization defines environmental health as “those aspects of human health, including quality of life, that are determined by physical, chemical, biological, social, and psychosocial factors in the environment.” This course will introduce students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds to the field of environmental health. Topics covered will include 1) harmful environmental exposures in water, air, and food (e.g., air pollution, pesticides); 2) aspects of the environment that are beneficial for health (e.g., urban forests, walkable neighbourhoods), and 3) emerging environmental health threats (e.g., climate change, global environmental change). This course will also provide an overview of tools that are used to generate information about the relationship between the environment and health (e.g., epidemiology, risk assessment) and how this information informs public health policy and practice. Students will also have the opportunity to engage more deeply on a particular environmental health topic of their choosing.

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This course is about the Canadian health care system and the political and economic forces that have shaped it. It is for anyone, regardless of academic or professional background, interested in the intersection of health care and public policy in Canada.

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The majority of adult life is occupied by work. Disability and illness related to work can have a serious impact, both on the individual and on society as a whole. Given the changing nature of work, with the growth of the “gig” economy, precarious work, the COVID-19 pandemic, and climate change, understanding the relationship between our work and health has never been more relevant. This purpose of this course is to introduce students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds to the field of work and health by exploring topics ranging from workers’ compensation through to broader understandings of working conditions, working life and how to create safe working conditions to promote worker health.

Sample Syllabus for Reference

This course covers an epistemological approach that considers the social determinants of health and Indigenous spiritual-environmental and cultural perspectives and approaches to health and wellness. It will include lecture, safe space for small and large group discussions, talks from Indigenous health leaders, and applied learning activities. Gain insight on Indigenous peoples’ perspectives on health and well-being, analyze the impacts of colonization and related policies on Indigenous peoples, and learn about cultural and traditional healing approaches to health policies, services, and practices. The strengths and resiliency of Indigenous peoples will be highlighted throughout the course.

SPPH 404 – Course Information – Centre for Excellence in Indigenous Health

By collaborating interprofessionally, each student team will identify and research a critical public health issue, and develop a detailed practical and effective intervention. Restricted to Undergraduate students.

Sample Syllabus for Reference

Prison Health aims to educate students from a variety of disciplines to respond to current health
issues within the Canadian correctional system. Through readings, reflective writing, guest presentations
and seminar-style class discussions, students will learn about the complexities of health for people in
prison and will gain understanding and skills in order to apply inter-disciplinary approaches to prison
health.

Sample Syllabus for Reference

COVID-19 has exposed underlying and persistent weaknesses in our global health system, while presenting new challenges. Key questions have emerged regarding how health systems function, the nature of the global health system, and the factors that lead to health inequities globally and within countries. This survey course will provide students with a comprehensive overview of health policy and systems, exploring the various policies, actions, organizations, and people focused on promoting, restoring or maintaining health. We will take a global and interdisciplinary perspective, drawing primarily on examples from low- and middle-income countries. The first part of the course will focus on comparative health systems, providing students with the analytic tools to understand and compare core aspects of systems such as health service delivery, financing, workforce and supply chain issues. The second part of the course will delve into how health policy gets made, focusing on the key stakeholders in government, multilateral organizations, industry, philanthropy and other sectors, that shape policy and systems. The final part of the course will explore emerging priorities and key debates in global health, such as sustainability and pandemic preparedness. Throughout the course, we will pay careful attention to  contextual factors, such as political, historical and social forces, that influence health inequity. Assessments will include regular reading reflections and quizzes, a class debate, and a term-long group project where students will focus on analyzing health policy and systems in one country. The course would also feature guest lecturers from leading global health experts, particularly scholars based in low- and middle-income countries.

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

1. Describe, analyze, and distinguish differences in the structure and functioning of health systems by using key frameworks and concepts
2. Explain with examples how economic, political, historical, and institutional factors contributed to the development of health systems in different jurisdictions
3. Identify key sustainability challenges at global, national, and local levels of health policy and systems
4. Identify and interpret with examples the role of key stakeholders and contextual factors in shaping health policy processes at different jurisdictional levels.
5. Apply these skills in an analysis of health systems and policy challenges in a chosen country through a group exercise that has students apply a ‘problems to causes to solutions’ approach.

Sample Syllabus for Reference

Planned collection, numeric and graphic summarization, and elementary statistical analysis of data. Examples primarily from health sciences illustrate standard techniques for parametric and non-parametric hypothesis testing; regression and correlation; contingency tables. Also randomization, “blindfolding” and other specifically biomedical topics in statistics. Class size may be limited.

Please note this is a Graduate level course.

Sample Syllabus for Reference – Traditional

Sample Syllabus for Reference – Blended Learning

Epidemiology, study, design and analysis, and outbreak investigation as it applies to institutional infection control.

Please note this is a Graduate level course.  This course is designed to explore fundamental concepts in epidemiology, biostatistics for epidemiology, study design and analysis and outbreak investigation as it applies to institutional infection control. The entire course will be delivered online in a problem-based learning format. For detailed course information, please visit the following webpage: https://pathology.ubc.ca/educational-programs/infection-prevention-and-control-certificate/courses/path477-spph401/  . Registration is restricted and only SPPH students may request permission to attend. Please contact the instructor, Dr. Monika Naus, directly for permission (monika.naus@bccdc.ca) and forward your permission to spph.graduate-programs@ubc.ca 

Sample Syllabus – visit https://pathology.ubc.ca/educational-programs/infection-prevention-and-control-certificate/courses/path477-spph401/

Basic epidemiological designs as a framework for commonly used biostatistical techniques such as the Mantel-Haenszel, chi-squared, linear and logistic regression, and survival analysis. Computer packages will be available for computation of assignments.

SPPH 500-007 is restricted to PhD students. 

Sample Syllabus for Reference

This course will introduce students to concepts and methods in the analysis of correlated data, with special emphasis on longitudinal and hierarchical data, including time series data, multilevel data, and spatial and spatiotemporal data. While the course has a focus on the introduction to the  generalize linear mixed effects models,  linear models with correlated error terms and generalize linear  models with inference via general estimating equations (GEE) will also be taught.

Sample Syllabus for Reference 

Sources and uses of epidemiologic data for health services planning and administration including methods of data collection and study design.

Critical thinking in epidemiology; principles and methods of study design; context for epidemiological investigations of human health.

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This second level course will teach research trainees to apply methods taught in prior courses towards the development of a fundable research protocol and the analysis and interpretation of real epidemiologic data.

Major quantitative research designs, measurement reliability and validity, common data sources used, internal and external validity, research proposals, and peer review.
Credit will be granted for only one of SPPH 506 or SPPH 548.

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SPPH 507 in conjunction with SPPH 607 is a required course for students in the MSc program. Students present and discuss their research and other topics of interest.

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Includes a significant component of applied epidemiology and biostatistics in a field setting.

Concepts and techniques of measurement in epidemiological research. Topics covered include validity, reliability and misclassification, scale design and the construction of questionnaires and indices for both health outcomes and exposures.

Collection and analysis of epidemiological data on cancer; genetic, occupational and other risk factors; analytic techniques; cancer control, prevention, screening, early detection and policy issues.

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Ethical considerations, intention-to-treat versus efficacy trials, principles of sampling and exclusion, methods of allocation and techniques of randomization, parallel versus cross over design, monitoring treatment outcomes, adverse effects, stopping rules, analytic techniques and data interpretation, and logistical issues in the management of clinical trials.

Principles and methods of epidemiology are applied to clinical problems. Evaluation and design of laboratory and clinical tests and of therapeutic interventions.

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Methods and application of decision analysis to improve health from the perspective of the policy maker, health professional, and patient.

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This course provides students with a strong foundation in the theory of public health surveillance, covering both infectious and chronic diseases. Students get practical experience through the analysis of surveillance data and planning of a surveillance program.

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The course focuses on systematic review methodology so that students will develop an understanding of the key components of a review and acquire the key skills needed to carry out their own reviews. 

Purposes, context, procedures, and relationships within qualitative health research and methodologies.

Epidemiology of viral, bacterial and parasitic infections with emphasis on the control of these infections in human populations. Immunization programs will be stressed.

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Role of air, water, food, and solid waste as sources of human health risks; global environmental health issues; sustainability.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has thoroughly disrupted settled ideas about what security means for a country and its population! Human security, a framework put forward in the 1990s as an alternative to traditional framings of national security argues that security should more appropriately focus on the status of people and not borders – and sees health as being both essential and instrumental. Human security in fact holds that a people-centered view of security is necessary for national, regional and global stability. This multi-dimensional social perspective also provides an alternative to narrowly constructed technical global health narratives, by not only considering access

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Leadership skills; use of information technologies in leadership; evidence-informed decision-making; policy development; and knowledge exchange and translation.

Foundational thinking giving rise to the concept of population health. Overview of the current state of research.

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Required for all MHSc students.

This course provides an introduction to theoretical and practical issues in relation to population data science and learning health systems. The theory will cover how we think about the performance of health systems, what learning health systems are, the data and other infrastructure we need to support learning and improvement, and the ethical legal and social considerations that underline all of this work. The practical part of the course is focused on real-world application of these theories, for example through projects related to population data science and artificial intelligence. The overarching project will be to use all of these ideas to design a data collection, research and engagement approach to address a real-world policy challenge.

This course uses a problem-based learning approach to introduce students to the material. Each week of the course will build on the last. The material covered here will be complementary to other SPPH courses, building health services research competencies such as knowledge of health care system frameworks and critical and analytic thinking.

This course is intended for second year students, as it will assume knowledge of many of the concepts taught in foundational required courses. Students completing a one-year Master’s program will be considered and are encouraged to contact the instructor to discuss their interest. This course will be relevance to students with a wide variety of interests, from health policy to data analysis including data science to ethical, legal and social considerations to public and community engagement.

Sample Outline for Reference

Mechanism of action of commonly encountered occupational toxic agents; relevance of laboratory and epidemiological evidence.

Scientific basis for the recognition, evaluation, and control of chemical, physical, and biological exposures; standard setting; exposure monitoring methods.

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Experience of colonization; Indian Act; the histories and intergenerational impact of the residential school; child-welfare systems; communicable disease prevention; the challenge of ethical public health practice; and traditional healing.

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Sample Syllabus for Reference – Summer 

Indicators of maternal/newborn well-being across population subgroups, changing trends in obstetrical intervention, perinatal morbidity, and the analysis of perinatal data.

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This course will review ethical discussions, principles and frameworks in relation to ethical issues that arise in population and public health. Ethical theory can help articulate the complexities of ethical issues and structure reasoning around the best responses. But there is no agreement about what ethical theory is the correct one, and different ethical theories emphasize different approaches to ethical concerns.

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Examines the concept of evaluation in health services and how various methodological approaches can be used in evaluative studies.

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Economic evaluation of health service interventions and programs, with emphasis on methods and components of program costing.

This course is about the Canadian health care system and the political and economic forces that shape it. It is for anyone – regardless of academic or professional background – interested in the intersection of health care, economics, and public policy in Canada. The course involves a purposeful mix of independent learning, in-person lectures, and Zoom seminars involving groupwork.

Sample Syllabus for Reference

This course will help students gain a broad understanding of the health system and health system change from an economics perspective. It will focus on why and how the healthcare system is structured and the ensuing contractual relationships between payers and providers.

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Resource allocation, economics and ethics based approaches for decision-making, uptake of evidence to inform resource use in health care.

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This course provides students with the opportunity to gain in-depth and practical skills in conducting economic evaluation of health technologies. In addition, the course considers, in detail, the policy context for the use of economic evaluation, drawing on experiences and evidence from both Canadian and international settings. Finally, current methodological and theoretical debates are presented.

Sample Syllabus for Reference

Critical examination of strategies regarding addictive behaviours, substance use and related problems, in the context of a multidisciplinary approach.

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Principles and applications of pharmacoepidemiology. Practical skills in designing, conducting, and appraising studies of medications in large populations.

Co-listed with PHAR 561. 

If you are interested but unable to register for 551, please contact spph.graduate-programs@ubc.ca .

SPPH 552 is an introductory course for students who would like to develop a basic ‘palette’ of science and risk communication principles, theories, and tools. If scientific voices are to be heard and used for personal, public, and political decision-making, then efficient and effective communication is essential. However, science communication, and particularly the communication of risk in the scientific context, is difficult to do well. This course will provide you with the knowledge, practice, and mentorship that you can use to communicate effectively in your career.

The work of public health professionals in British Columbia is increasingly dependent on large and complex datasets from sources such as Vital Statistics, Medical Services Plan (MSP) billings, the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) hospital Discharge Abstract Database (DAD), and PharmaNet. The overarching objective of this course is to provide students with practical, hands-on experience cleaning, preparing, linking, and managing the types of health data likely to be encountered in workplaces as a public health professional. It will use the principles of computer science to ensure correctness, efficiency, security, and reproducibility in all stages of data management and subsequent analyses.

This course is using the ‘SAS’ statistical analysis software, which is is the traditional standard for working with large datasets in the healthcare industry.

Injury epidemiology; surveillance; development, implementation, and evaluation techniques of preventive strategies; determinants of health; social marketing; injury policy; evidence-based prevention strategies; utilization of injury datasets.

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Industrial hygiene and environmental exposure monitoring, methods, and instrumentation, and theory. Laboratories demonstrate workplace sampling and analysis techniques.

Industrial ventilation, heating and air conditioning systems, respiratory protection, chemical protective clothing.

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This is the MSc OEH Capstone course, and is restricted to MSc OEH students only.

Human factors in workplace design, anthropometry, work physiology. This course applies knowledge about human capabilities to the design of work, including workspace design, work methods, work organization. Topics include systems design and task analysis, anthropometry and workspace design, upper-limb musculoskeletal injuries and back injuries, shift-work, skilled work and mental activity, psychosocial and organizational aspects of work and ergonomics regulations and standards.

Application of occupational hygiene principles using field investigations, critical appraisal of results, and communication with labour and management.

Determinants of exposure, sampling strategies.

Sample Syllabus for Reference

Safety management; systems analysis; accident investigation; collection of accident data; fault trees; total loss control.

 The objective of this course is to give occupational hygiene students the basic knowledge required to measure, assess, analyze and solve noise and vibration problems in (mostly) industrial situations, and to discuss such problems and their solutions with specialists in the field.

Students will acquire a knowledge of acoustical and vibration concepts, quantities and terminology and measurement techniques. They should achieve a basic understanding, and some hands-on experience, of the characteristics of sound waves and of how sound propagates, of the effects of sound and vibration on humans and how to mediate these effects.

They should acquire a general understanding of measures available to control noise and vibration problems and of their cost- effectiveness. They should be capable of doing basic calculations to predict noise and vibration levels and reductions.

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SPPH 580 (3/6) Directed Studies – pass/fail or percentage graded

This is a data-driven course that focuses on applying supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods and non-standard analytic problems with healthcare data. The data that will serve as the motivation will be large clinical and administrative databases commonly used in health services research in Canada, such as hospital discharge data. Students in this course will be exposed to, and apply, advanced statistical methods for analyzing sophisticated healthcare-based data problems.

Permission of the instructor is required to register for the course.

Sample Syllabus for Reference

This introductory course is designed for Masters in Public Health (MPH) students relatively new to the field of qualitative research. The overall aim is to provide students with the understanding and skills necessary to conduct an objective appraisal of published qualitative literature and assess its relevance and application to their field of practice. The course will provide students with an overview of what constitutes qualitative research, the common philosophical assumptions and paradigms underpinning this research, the essential elements of a study design, the common methods of data collection, ethical consideration during qualitative research, and what makes a good piece of qualitative research. This course is restricted to SPPH MPH students.

Sample Syllabus for Reference

This is a foundational course for those entering the global health stream. Within the context of least developed countries or resource constrained populations this course will address burden of disease estimates, key indicators and principal determinants of health, global intervention strategies, public, NGO and private sector players in global health and their performance.

Sample Syllabus for Reference

This course will provide a skills/practice-oriented experience, like many courses for health professionals, a case-/problem-based learning approach using real cases/problems on which you choose to intervene.  It provides opportuntiy to safely practice solving real problems, in a time-constrained environment, collaboratively intervening in small teams of your construction to improve global public health, sustainability, and preventive medicine outcomes, framed didactically through the problem-solving lens of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and of the Social Determinants of Health

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Introductory course on Bayesian statistics and methods, specific focus on Bayesian hierarchical models for correlated health data in general and for small area spatiotemporal diease mapping in particular.  Examples of health science case studies will be illusatrated using freeware R and WinBUGs.  The Bayesian principles, theorem, and key ideas will be introduced with minimum use of mathematics.

Sample Syllabus for Reference

In the midst of a lingering pandemic where public health’s primary focus has been on addressing infectious diseases, it is easy to overlook the incredible toll that chronic diseases take in our own families, our communities, province, country and globally. NCDs such as cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, diabetes and cancer account for the highest causes of preventable death in Canada and the world; they also constitute the largest avoidable burden on our publicly funded medical care system.

This course will focus on understanding the range of NCDs and their impacts in terms of morbidity and mortality. It will also provide opportunities to become familiar with ways to access data and resources to delve into deeper understanding of these issues. However, while previous versions of the course have focused primarily on epidemiologic concepts and tools, this updated course will build on this foundation to focus on: Which population and public health approaches work to prevent, manage and even reverse the tsunami of chronic diseases that we face? The course will explore some general principles of responding to NCDs, as well as a range of approaches that can be deployed to curtail this ‘other’ epidemic. It will consider issues such as: How preventable are these conditions? Which strategies are most effective for different levels of intervention (e.g., individual, clinical, community, provincial, national and global)? The course will be of interest to students in both thesis-based and applied (MPH) programs, as well as to those with clinical backgrounds, and appeal to those who want to make a difference.

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This course will provide graduate students in public health and related disciplines an introduction to policy development and analysis with a focus on policies that address population health outcomes and their equity and distribution including both Canadian and global content.

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Actors, processes and contexts shaping global health policy; politics and policy processes at the global and related levels; impact and influence of dynamics within and between different levels on health disparities and inequitable access to health services and technologies.

Applied project on approved topic based on practicum: requires a written and oral report.

MSc Thesis

The purpose of this course is to provide students with learning opportunities to understand fundamental epidemiological concepts through the application of methods using population and public health datasets. The purpose is also to introduce students to emerging epidemiological methodologies that are frequently being applied to population and public health-related research questions in prestigious epidemiology journal publications.

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Required course in PhD program. Topics of current interest will be presented and discussed by students and various faculty.

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Research approaches in the area of population and public health; focus on developing research questions and the centrality of research questions in conducting research.

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Drawing causal conclusions from observational data is a common task in the public health sciences. The goal of this 3-credit course is to develop knowledge, skills, and competency in causal inference methodology. The course offers in-depth coverage of methods developed over the past three decades. We will look at probabilistic causality, causal diagrams, counterfactuals, mediation analysis, and methods for evaluating treatment effects.

This course is divided into 12 modules. In each module you will find reading material, tutorials, and videos. By the design, they complement each other. The readings introduce the topic, the videos discuss ideas, and the tutorials help you put them into practice. I will also share a wealth of material that you can use both during the course and long after you’ve completed it. The tutorials will use Stata; alternatively, you can apply your R programming knowledge from previous courses. Additional tutorials will teach you how to create and analyze cause and effect diagrams.

Sample Syllabus for Reference

SPPH 699: Doctoral Dissertation (0)

SPPH 570 (3) / SPPH 710 (0): Current Issues in Public Health Practice