Sue J. Goldie Presents “Foundations for Public Health”

Professor Sue J. Goldie welcomed the Harvard Chan School’s incoming graduate cohorts with an on-line orientation – Foundations for Public Health (FPH). The genesis for an orientation course began when then Dean Julio Frenk identified the need for a common public health foundation for all incoming graduate-level students and partnered with Goldie to conceptualize the core curriculum and develop the instructional materials over several months, ultimately teaching it together in 2015. Goldie expanded the course into a full online summer course in subsequent years.

Professor Goldie established a core set of learning objectives, taking into account public health education accreditation criteria, to generate foundational curriculum content and craft the final teaching materials.

The video-based course comprised four modules: building a foundation for population health, health conditions and epidemiological trends, equity and social determinants of health, and responses from the health and non-health sector. It provided a conceptual foundation for critically thinking about public health, presented in “plain English words” to introduce students to the basics of key topics and complex concepts. The course was part of a complete orientation including a full day in-person case-study session. Students viewed the on-line component on their own, at their own pace, with the opportunity to review portions or segments of particular interest to their field of study. Additionally, Professor Goldie provided the students with a website that they could use as a “resource portal” for the entire year.

Material preparation and multimedia production for the course is supported by both the CHDS Media Hub and the Global Health Education and Learning Incubator (Harvard University) Learning Studios.

More about the CHDS Media Hub

The CHDS Media Hub combines a physical brainstorming space with a laboratory-like digital environment to prototype, pilot and produce educational multimedia for teaching, learning and policy translation.