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Understand the challenges facing healthcare delivery, and design a solution for real-world implementation.
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The greatest challenge to effectively managing and improving healthcare delivery isn’t availability, but access. Join a global health community in this online short course from Harvard's Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning (VPAL), in association with HarvardX, as you analyze the influence that power and social structures have in shaping disease response. Through real-world case studies, you’ll investigate international approaches to fighting Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and MDR-TB, and understand the burden of mental health. You’ll evaluate how ideologies, problem framing, and the choice of metrics shape health policy.
With guidance from expert university faculty, you’ll design your own global health intervention for actual implementation across public and private settings. Over the course of 10 weeks online, this program will also equip you with the managerial and soft skills to complement your medical knowledge, and you’ll ultimately leave with a premier certificate from Harvard’s VPAL, in association with HarvardX.
This online short course is for anyone with a passion for healthcare innovation who is looking for solutions to better serve their communities. This includes professional clinicians and public health practitioners as well as established global health leaders such as advisors, policymakers, and government officials. This program would also be relevant for investors and donors of global health initiatives, or those working in a multilateral organization, bilateral agency, NPO, or NGO.
Explore the possibilities and constraints of healthcare delivery as you work through the weekly modules of this online short course.
Orientation module: Welcome to your Online Campus
Module 1: Introduction to the biosocial
Module 2: Why ideas matter: Social theory in global health
Module 3: The history of global health and colonial legacy
Module 4: Political economy and foreign aid
Module 5: The global AIDS movement
Module 6: Challenges in healthcare delivery: Lessons from Liberia and Haiti
Module 7: Building an effective rural health delivery model in Rwanda
Module 8: Critical perspectives on metrics of disease
Module 9: The unique challenges of mental health
Module 10: Values and global health
Learn about global health delivery across public and private settings and earn an official premier certificate from Harvard’s Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning (VPAL), in association with HarvardX.
Assessment is continuous and based on a series of practical assignments completed online. In order to be issued with a digital certificate, you’ll need to meet the requirements outlined in the course handbook. The handbook will be made available to you as soon as you begin the course.
The number of people living with HIV globally in 2020.
UNAIDS (2021).
The percentage of people with mental health disorders in low- and middle-income countries who don’t receive treatment.
World Health Organization (Aug, 2020).
GetSmarter, an edX partner, delivers career-relevant, fully supported, and expert-led online courses from the world's leading universities and institutions. As an online learning expert with over 15 years' experience, GetSmarter leverages long-standing expertise in market research, data analysis, and business insights to ensure that you gain the skills critical to career growth.