Course Offerings

Course Description: This course will examine critical thinking and critical analysis and provide opportunities to apply these skills in addressing health sciences questions and issues. This course is organized by Modules that build on previous knowledge, with summative activities during the final Modules. The course places a strong emphasis on self-reflection, group engagement and experiential learning.

Course Description: This course will help students improve their ability to locate, evaluate, critically appraise and apply evidence-based practice in the health sciences. The course is organized by modules that build on previous knowledge to enhance critical appraisal and scientific writing skills. This course has a strong emphasis on experiential learning.

Course Description: Concepts of health equity have developed over the past 20 years to fundamentally shape global and national policy directions and the ways we think about health. Health Equity is now seen as a human rights issue, shaping care delivery and systems design. This course provides learners with the opportunity to explore and apply key concepts, frameworks and initiatives relating to health equity, seen from the viewpoint of both the professionals who operationalize health-equity values, and the diverse populations whose lived experience we seek to improve. Throughout the course, participants will develop their abilities to identify, analyze, and trouble-shoot the ethical, practical, and political complexities of engaging in equity-oriented care, at both the health-services, and health-systems, levels.

Course Description: The field of global health encompasses an array of health problems that share in common the fact that these transcend national borders (e.g. infectious disease, child mortality) and are based in forces, systems, and relations of power that also transcend national borders, such as climate change and global economic inequalities. Global health is not only a series of problems though. It is a field dedicated to reducing the global burden of suffering and disease, and to using an inter-disciplinary lens to analyze and develop solutions to socially complex health problems. This course provides learners with an opportunity to immerse themselves in key topics, debates, lived experiences, and creative interventions in the field of global health. Throughout the course, participants will develop their abilities to identify, analyze, and trouble-shoot the ethical, practical, and political complexities of engaging in health care or research in culturally or institutionally unfamiliar settings and with marginalized groups. Students will have the opportunity to apply their learning to the analysis of one particular issue of personal or professional interest to them for a term project.

Course Description: This course focuses on Indigenous health situations and matters. Throughout the course, participants will have the opportunity to develop an understanding of philosophical and theoretical foundations for understanding Indigenous health from multiple perspectives, Indigenous and non-Indigenous. Grounded in critical race theory, themes will be examined as they relate to creating equitable practices and policies in Indigenous health. This course enhances participants’ critical thinking skills through readings and discussions in various learning activities, as well as through reflection.

Course Description: The course emphasizes the complex biological, social, cultural, and legal aspects and implications of substance use and addiction. The course content is underpinned by theory that acknowledges the socially constructed nature of substances and what is deemed problematic. Contemporary and historical issues in substance use are examined, including consideration of the determinants of health. The evolution of various responses to substance use are compared. Case studies focus on the interconnectedness of poverty, loneliness, violence, and culture in creating and problematizing substance use.

Course Description: This course is in development. Through this course, students will be introduced to Global Health Systems and Policy. It is expected to launch in Winter 2024.

Course Description: In this course, students will learn about relationships between sustainability, the environment and human health. Foundational concepts in sustainability will be followed by an exploration of how a particular pressing issue – climate change including changing temperatures and precipitation, extreme weather events and resource scarcity - can affect environments, societies, and in turn, health care systems, and determine population health outcomes. Specifically, this course will equip students with a nuanced understanding of cross-cutting issues including environmental justice, political economies of health, diverse impacts of climate change on health across the life course, and how place and environment can affect human health and also be determined by sustained health behaviour.

Course Description: The course emphasizes the psycho/socio/cultural aspects and implications of trauma as a determinant of mental health, and the social determinants of mental health (with trauma being one of these). The course content is underpinned by theory that acknowledges the socially constructed nature of the mental health/illness discourse. Contemporary and historical issues in mental health sciences are examined. The evolution of various diagnostic systems are compared. Case studies focus on the relations of poverty, violence, and culture-bound syndromes to mental health.

Course Description: Our population is aging, meaning that we will continue to see an increasing proportion of older individuals. This course is designed to introduce students to this important demographic shift as it is projected to add to healthcare burden. However, increased longevity does not translate to better health outcomes. The aging population will present new challenges to healthcare professionals, and as such it is important to examine aging across the lifespan through a holistic lens (through a critical analysis of multiple determinants of health). Furthermore, as more information is available now than ever before due to advances in information technology, healthcare professionals must become adept at critically evaluating the evolving information base.

Course Description: This course explores the determinants of child health from the prenatal period to early adulthood. Students will develop an understanding of typical child development and the facilitators that optimize health outcomes in child and adolescent populations. Throughout the course, students will consider and explore issues of healthy child development within a social context – locally, nationally and internationally. Students will reflect on their roles as healthcare providers, and child health specialists, in promoting child health. The course focuses on the application of physical, social-emotional and cognitive developmental concepts in childhood, and an examination of the social environment and its effects on development. Emphasis is placed on contemporary issues affecting child health.

Course Description: This course will introduce students to the use of motivational interviewing (MI) as an evidence-based counselling strategy used across health care professions and contexts. It will focus on the development of skills necessary for using MI as a communication strategy and for facilitating personal change. The similarities and differences between counselling and psychotherapy will be explored, with MI framed as a counselling method. This course will focus on the development of basic motivational interviewing skills and will use a variety of experiential strategies for online, real-time practice with students and instructors.

Course Description: This course examines project management principles and practices that enable successful implementation and completion of projects in health-care settings. Each student will develop and apply their knowledge by selecting an individual project of interest that they will learn to manage over the duration of the course through individual and group activities. Learning modules focus on creating a “Project Charter”, assessing the nature and scope of work to be undertaken, identifying and determining methods for measuring the quality of project deliverables, creating and managing a project timeline and a communication plan, and managing relationships with project stakeholders.

Course Description: This course focuses on the major policy elements of the Canadian healthcare system. Specifically, how the healthcare system is structured, who the major actors and institutions are in the system and how healthcare policy in Canada is formed reformed. Utilizing two conceptual frameworks; systems theory and public policy design, students gain the foundations to better understand the complexity of the healthcare system and an approach to shaping, forming and evaluating public policy issues in Canadian healthcare.

Course Description: This course provides students with an introduction to the common quantitative and qualitative approaches to research through topics such as design, sampling, measurement and interpretation. Students will engage in learning activities that focus on the  basic concepts and terminology surrounding quantitative and qualitative research to lay the groundwork for further advanced understanding. Throughout this course students will evaluate the methodological features of qualitative and quantitative research studies in the published literature .

Course Description: This course provides students with foundational knowledge of program evaluation theory and practice in the context of health systems. The stages of the evaluation process are examined through module-based learning and applied in experiential activities. Students are provided a framework for designing an evaluation plan for a relevant health program. Through the course materials and learning activities, students will gain knowledge, skill, and appreciation of the essential elements of program evaluation in healthcare settings.

Course Description: This online course will prepare current and aspiring leaders in healthcare with the leadership skills required to effectively manage and lead people, teams, and healthcare organizations to support improved patient care and positive outcomes. This course includes self-reflection, group engagement, and combines theory and practice, through application in case-studies and real-life healthcare leadership practice. Throughout the course, participants will develop their abilities to identify, and analyze best management and leadership practices, and apply their knowledge comprehension in a variety of learning activities and assignments to navigate the many complexities and challenges of leading in a healthcare organization.

Course Description: This course will provide an introduction to economic evaluation methods of health interventions, and discuss how they are used to assess “value for money” in health care. Students will develop skills to critically appraise different types of health economic evaluations.

Course Description: Implementation science is the scientific study of methods and strategies that facilitate the uptake of evidence-based practice and research into regular use by health care practitioners and policymakers. This course is designed to provide students with in-depth knowledge of the practice of implementation science and how its principles, study designs, frameworks, and theories can be practically leveraged. Through case studies and projects, this course will demonstrate how contemporary approaches in implementation science can be directly applied to address implementation gaps. Course material will include concrete steps and tools for the rigorous application of implementation science.