Danya Keene, Ph.D., Director

This cross-departmental YSPH concentration prepares students to analyze and address systems and processes that perpetuate health injustice in the United States. Students examine how historical and current systems of privilege and power, related to race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and other identities, create unequal burdens on health that are avoidable and unjust. Students also develop organizing, advocacy, and policy skills that prepare them to advance health justice. Finally, students develop tools to analyze public health research methods, discourse, and practice using a health justice framework.

Though not limited to Connecticut, the concentration emphasizes local health needs and will involve sustained partnerships with local organizations that are working to advance health justice. The concentration has the following components described in detail below: (1) a required core course in health activism and advocacy, (2) a required critical public health analysis course, (3) two additional course selected from a menu of course options to meet additional learning objectives, and (4) an applied practice experience (APE) in health justice with a partner organization.

Concentration Requirements

SBS 590

Advocacy and Activism

1

One of the following courses:
SBS 592	Biomedical Justice: Public Health Critiques and Praxis	1
SBS 593	Community-Based Participatory Research in Public Health	1

One of the following applied practice experiences: 1
EPH 501	U.S. Health Justice Concentration Practicum	1
EPH 521	Applied Practice Experience	0
HPM 555	Health Policy or Health Care Management Practicum	1
HPM 556	Advanced Health Policy Practicum	1
SBS 562	Inclusive Design for the Built Environment: Participatory Design	1

1	Students must complete an applied practice experience (APE) with a partner organization. Students completing a practicum course will work with a partner organization under the supervision of a YSPH faculty member (Danya Keene, Trace Kershaw, or Tekisha Everette).

One course that critically analyzes the roles of history, power, and privilege in creating and maintaining health inequities, selected from the following approved courses:

ARCH 3272	Exhibitionism: Politics of Display 2	3
CDE 545	Health Disparities by Race and Social Class: Application to Chronic Disease Epidemiology	1
CDE 570	Humanities, Arts, and Public Health	1
EMD 584	Advanced Global Health Justice Practicum: Fieldwork	1
ENV 649	Food Systems: The Implications of Unequal Access 3	3
ENV 846	Perspectives on Environmental Injustices 3	3
HIST 479	Sickness and Health in African American History 4	1
HSHM 406	Healthcare for the Urban Underserved 4	1
HSHM 465	Reproductive Health, Gender & Power in the U.S. 4	1
HSHM 475	Race and Disease in American Medicine 4	1
SBS 531	Health and Aging	1
SBS 560	Sexual and Reproductive Health	1
SBS 570	LGBTQ Population Health	1
SBS 581	Stigma and Health	1
SBS 587	Harm Reduction and Drug Policy Reform	1

2	This course is offered in the School of Architecture.
3	This course is offered in the School of the Environment.
4	These courses are offered in Yale College.

One course that discusses how systems of government and law affect health equity at the local, state, and national level, selected from the following approved courses:

EMD 582	Political Epidemiology	1
ENV 975	Western Lands and Communities Field Clinic: Research to Practice 3	3
EPH 555	Clinic in Climate Justice and Public Health	1
HPM 514	Health Politics, Governance, and Policy	1
HPM 588	Public Health Law	1
SBS 585	Sexuality, Gender, Health, and Human Rights	1

3	This course is offered in the School of the Environment.

Competencies

Each student in the U.S. Health Justice Concentration will master the core curriculum competencies and the competencies for the student’s department/program. In addition, upon receiving an M.P.H. degree in the U.S. Health Justice Concentration, the student will be able to:

• Develop community organizing and health advocacy strategies to advance health equity
• Analyze the national, state, and local regulatory environment as leverage points to impact policy change that advances health equity
• Analyze the ways that power, privilege, and history shape the creation and interpretation of public health knowledge and practice
• Employ multiple sources of evidence (e.g., narrative and epidemiological data) and a critical justice lens to construct persuasive arguments that advance health equity
• Reflect on how their own positionality, subjectivity, power, and privilege shape their engagement in public health practice and advocacy