Postgraduate Course: From Public Health to Global Health: Critical studies of health intervention (SCAN11035)
Course Outline
| School | School of Social and Political Science |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Since the birth of public health, governmental and non-governmental organisations have endeavoured to intervene in, shape and improve the health of populations, in many cases populations located far away from those institutions themselves. This course explores the historical and social forms those interventions take, including continuities and discontinuities between colonial, international, global and planetary health, and provides an introduction to anthropological analysis of their framings, impacts and effects. |
| Course description |
The term 'global health' is used to refer to our interconnected health in a globalised economy, to the goal of achieving universal coverage for basic health services, and to the emergence of transnational systems of governance and delivery in response to those challenges. This course explores the distinctive contribution that an anthropological approach to globalisation and health can make to this rapidly changing field of research and practice. This contribution ranges from critical perspectives on the relationships between public, international, global and planetary health, to the translation of public health knowledge and policy into effective action in specific social and cultural contexts, to reflection on how international health organizations are producing a transnational government of the body.
The course takes a problem-based approach and focuses on 'grand challenges' in public health, international health, global health, and planetary health, such as those posed by global pandemics, humanitarian crisis, environmental change, or the limited reach of child and maternal health programmes in 'resource-poor' locations. Through a series of ethnographic case studies, we will examine how the concepts and practices associated with health interventions travel to different parts of the world and interact with local agendas. This will provide the basis for an exploration of the possibilities for anthropological engagement with global health problems, institutions and programmes.
Possible topics include:
1. From public health to global health?
This session explores the emergence of 'international health', 'global health' and 'planetary health' as concepts, networks of institutions, and problems.
2. Between global health ethnography and history
This session explores how anthropologists produce knowledge, the relationship between ethnographic and historical methods.
3. Global health knowledges
In this session, we will discuss the nature of data production and consumption in global health and the rise of metrics as a knowledge form.
4.Values in health interventions
In this session we will discuss how norms and standards are established in global health and by whom, and why 'value' has become a helpful concept for anthropologists seeking to understand what global health is and what it does.
5. Health materialities
In this session, we will explore how and when a technologically driven global health agenda came about and the relationships between people, things and institutions, that become embedded in those technologies in practice.
6.Humanitarian crises
How, this class explores, have we all become implicated in the suffering of strangers?
7. Eradication
What is eradication, what kind of world does it engender, and how does it shape the way we think about disease?
8. Chronic disease
In this session, we will deploy ideas of structural violence and socially-produced global inequality to think about the chronic disease epidemic as a slow-moving, never-natural disaster.
9. Reproductive and maternal health
In this class, we will trace the historical and contemporary significance of reproductive and maternal health in programmes of population governance and development.
10. Antimicrobial resistance
In this class, we examine how biomedical community and governments have responded to the spread of AMR in various settings.
11. Environmental toxicities
This session examines growing awareness of the impacts of a chemical way of life on environmental and human health. It introduces the emerging field of chemo-ethnographies and evaluates its value for critical studies of health interventions.
12. Community health workers
Global health agencies and national governments are investing huge amounts of resources in CHW programmes across the world. In this lecture we will critically evaluate the emergence of this global health phenomenon for its potentials and pitfalls by focusing on health workers experiences and challenges in the field.
13. Anthropological Engagements
This session will provide the opportunity for reflection on the distinctive contribution that anthropology can make to health interventions.
Student Learning Experience:
The course is hands-on and seminar based. It will consist of a combination of lectures, group activities, presentations, debates and discussions. Students will be expected to undertake all of the core reading for each week and to contribute substantially to the online and class learning environment. We encourage you to make connections between theory, ethnography and global health policy. The course provides an introduction to anthropological perspectives on global health and is open to students with backgrounds in social sciences, natural sciences and the humanities.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2026/27, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 30 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 20,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 10,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
166 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
30% Short Essay on a Global Health Device «br /»
70% Long Essay |
| Feedback |
Formative feedback will be provided on the short essay. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Show an advanced understanding of both applied and critical anthropology in relation to public health, colonial health, international health, global health and planetary health
- Critically reflect on and analyse the relationship between globalization and health from an anthropological perspective
- Engage with and develop independent arguments in relation to anthropological debates about health policy and practice and clearly present those arguments in seminars and essays.
- Form anthropological questions and set their own anthropological research agenda in relation to global health issues
- Critically evaluate continuities and discontinuities between different historical framings of health intervention and be able to contextualise those framings socially and culturally.
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Reading List
Biehl, J. & A. Petryna 2013.When people come first: critical studies in global health.Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Farmer, P., A. Kleinman, J. Kim & M. Basilico 2013.Reimagining Global Health.University of California Press.
Fassin, D. 2023.The Worlds of Public Health: Anthropological Excursions.Polity Press.
Lovell, A.M., Gradmann, C., Beaudevin, C., Gaudillière, J.P., Pordié, L. (Eds.) 2020.Global Health and the New World Order: Historical and Anthropological Approaches to a Changing Regime of Governance.Manchester University Press.
Nichter, M 2008.Global Health: Why Cultural Perceptions, Social Representations, and Biopolitics Matter. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press.
Packard, R. 2016.A History of Global Health: Interventions Into the Lives of Others.Johns Hopkins University Press. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Creative problem solvers and researchers
Skilled communicators student will learn how to talk and write about health interventions critically and persuasively
Critical and reflective thinkers
Curiosity for learning that makes a positive difference
Courage to expand and fulfil their potential
Passion to engage locally and globally |
| Keywords | International health,colonialism,international development,global health,planetary health |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Marlee Tichenor
Tel:
Email: Marlee.Tichenor@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mr James Wills
Tel:
Email: jwills2@ed.ac.uk |
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