Certificate in Climate and Health

This course will explore the public health impacts of global climate change, the responses undertaken by the health sector to become more resilient to those impacts, and potential mitigation efforts and activities. Public health responses will cover examples from around the world, and include issues around risk communication and implementation of the adaptation strategies. It will provide a practical approach to conducting vulnerability and risk assessments, and students will be introduced to a range of skills to assess and respond to climate-related health impacts.

Recommended prerequisite: EH 582/GH 582. Building on EH/GH 582, this course offers an advanced examination of climate and health research and solutions. On the research side, this course will use an in-depth climate health impact assessment study to demonstrate scientific premise, study design, data access and processing, research methodology, results visualization and interpretation. On the solutions side, we will unpack the history and current state of play of global and national climate policy while also diving deep into state and local efforts. In addition, we will pursue emerging topics related to climate change research and policy. Throughout the semester, students will work on a project that will contribute to the Georgia Climate Project, a multi-university consortium co-founded by Emory. Through this effort we will apply systems thinking tools to propose strategies and identify stakeholders important for implementing climate solutions.

The link between the air we breathe and human health affects millions globally, placing urban air quality as a leading contributor to the global burden of disease. This course examines ways to characterize urban air pollution as well as its public health implications based on recent clinical, epidemiological, and toxicological research. The course will be highly interactive and will provide instruction on conducting basic, applied air quality research in academic, governmental, and grassroots settings.

In this course, students will explore the special environmental disease burden in Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), contributing factors, and specific risks. They will critically evaluate the principal environmental interventions for effectiveness, scalability, and sustainability. They will examine policies and practices of international organizations, governments, and implementers. They will also consider the effects of climate change on these environmental health risks. Throughout the course, students will address the justice issues presented this large and preventable disease burden borne almost exclusively on low-resource populations.

Prerequisite: Helpful if students have some background in biology. This course covers ways the environment influences the transmission and spread of infectious diseases in humans. We consider air, water, soil, animal, and human influences, with case studies on each of these factors. The course covers methods used in the study of infectious diseases, including epidemiology, mathematical modeling, risk analysis, social science, ecology, and molecular biology. Students will learn to think from the perspective of a pathogen trying to maximize its fitness over both short- and long-term time scales.

This course introduces students to the major laws, regulations, and policies applicable to environmental health, primarily in the United States. Readings, discussions, and expert guest speakers are designed to explore the history, politics, economics, and ethics of environmental health policy, including issues around environmental justice. Case studies, in-class activities and policy analysis assignments will emphasize practical skills in policy development and promotion while exposing students to the challenges of advancing evidence-based environmental health policy in the context of competing political perspectives and priorities.

Politics, who gets what, when and how, stands at the intersection of power and policy. This course aims to prepare students to navigate political challenges faced by public health practitioners. Since public health reforms lead to winners and losers, this means political mapping, identifying key players, their interests, and the institutions through which they operate. It means moving away from idealized best practices, and toward politically feasible strategies that fit local contexts. To promote such political competence, the course makes use of frameworks applied to specific cases, such as heat exposure of migrant farmworkers in the U.S. and family planning in Indonesia.

The goal of environmental justice is to create a world with socially and environmentally equitable outcomes and a world wherein all have equal opportunity to participate in processes leading to evidence- based, positive policy. The methods of environmental justice are based on what is necessary for creating that space: engagement of communities and cultivation of capacity to understand and respond to environmental concerns; moral and empirically sound collaborations, and the goal of making a visible and positive difference for communities. This elective course will review intellectual contributions by community-based, anti-colonial and social theory leaders; frameworks for structuring and maintaining community ties; special ethical considerations for working with indigenous and other historically colonized communities; and will offer examples of environmental justice in public health research.

As our climate continues to warm, threats to public health will intensify. Translating climate science for various audiences is key to promoting understanding and acting on climate change. Climate change communication seeks to understand the influences on audiences' perception of climate change and how these perceptions promote or inhibit action. In this course, students will learn how to employ public health communication theories, skills, and strategies to create a climate change communication campaign plan that includes key audiences and messages, products, and evaluation plan.

This course considers public health aspects of preparedness and management of natural and man-made disasters, including hurricanes, floods, and biosecurity threats, with an emphasis on understanding their complexity and impact. The course is taught using texts, peer-reviewed articles, and presentations by top field experts. The course is designed to stimulate understanding and to encourage an exchange of ideas regarding lessons learned from the past and the implications for current and future polices and disaster planning.

This interdisciplinary course examines how cities and neighborhoods can have both positive and adverse effects on human health and produces recommendations to improve these outcomes. This seminar is an elective planning and public health course that explores the interconnections between these fields and equips students with skills and experiences to plan healthy communities. This course covers planning and public health foundations, natural and built environments, vulnerable populations and health equity, and health policy and global impacts. This course is offered in conjunction with Emory?s Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health and the Georgia Tech City and Regional Planning program and brings together students from both programs and perspectives. When offered in person, half of the course may take place at Georgia Tech; allow for travel time.

Prerequisites: at least one GIS class (DATA 530) or equivalent. Geospatial information collected from satellite remote sensing has become a powerful tool in environmental and public health science and policy making. However, public health researchers usually lack training to benefit from this rapidly evolving technology. This computer lab-based course provides students with the theoretical basis and refined understanding of satellite remote sensing technologies, and tools for geospatial data analysis. Students will learn (1) the history, terminology and data structure of both land and atmospheric remote sensing such as those from MODIS and Landsat, and (2) the strategies and techniques to analyze geospatial data in advanced software packages. Various case studies and lab exercises help students overcome the initial hurdle to the effective use of satellite data in land use change and air pollution characterization, climate change and other areas related to public health. The final project allows the students to apply satellite data together with other information to solve a problem of their interest.

Additional in-depth computer exercises to EH 587; must enroll concurrently with EH 587. Enroll in EH 587 first before enrolling in EH 587L.

Prerequisites: Prior coursework in introductory GIS (e.g. INFO530) and multivariable regression. Spatial EPI includes both the characterization of the geographic distribution of disease, and the investigation of the role of spatially structured processes/exposures as determinants of disease in populations. Upon completion, students will be able to evaluate epidemiologic research using common spatial analytic approaches; match appropriate methods to specific epidemiologic needs or questions; prepare effective visualizations of spatial data; conduct statistical cluster or autocorrelation analysis; estimate model-based disease risk maps; and conduct basic exploratory spatial regression.

This course will acquaint students with the comprehensive nature of public health preparedness and response efforts for disasters whether natural or man-made. Students will get introduced to practical considerations of public health preparedness from the local, state, and national levels. Discussions of specific preparedness elements necessary for responses to natural disasters and man-made events will be covered, often in consultation with guest speakers and experts in various aspects of public health preparedness and practice. Ethical and legal issues related to preparedness and bioterrorism are also discussed. Students can expect interactive discussions, assigned readings, in-class exercises, and a project and/or paper.

Malnutrition during humanitarian emergencies, including acute malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies, is very common. This course will discuss how organizations decide when, what type, and how much food to distribute during crisis. It also will address other programs that are used to prevent malnutrition, how organizations concerned with nutrition evaluate nutritional status in individuals and populations and the various types of feeding programs that are implemented in emergency situations. The course will include practical field exercises on nutrition as well as visits by guest practitioners from the field.