CECS 650 - Community Health and Equity

3 Credit(s) | Seminar | Graded
Course can be counted for credit once

Description:
This course will introduce students to trans/disciplinary U.S. and global perspectives on community health/mental health making connections between personal health, multi-systemic resources creating societal conditions for “wellness as fairness”, and community mobilization for equity. Students will learn comparative critical/intersectional perspectives on addressing social determinants of health/mental health in specific US & international settings, using a wide variety of research methods promoting community engagement and a vision of research as a Human Right (Appadurai, 2006) including auto-ethnography, arts-based and Community Based Participatory Action Research. Drawing on a continuum of health promotion/prevention/treatment interventions, we will explore frameworks for using health and health care to activate person-centered, community-engaged, and integrative health interventions within health care and other community settings, using cultural and intergenerational life-course perspectives on the timing and settings best promoting health and healing. We will explore examples of transformational action research, policy and social movements practice through partnerships with communities and links to local and transnational social movements addressing specific health and social justice issues. Students will bring to the course their specific areas of research, practice, or policy interest in community health/mental health, and explore how their work can be informed by relevant research, public policy initiatives, community partnerships, collaborative leadership, and social movements promoting health equity.

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