VTPEH 6172 - Leading Change for Health Equity, Sustainability, and Justice

Fall. 2 credits. Student option grading.

Enrollment limited to MPH students; Graduate and Undergraduate students with permission of instructor.

G. Meredith.

Issues related to health equity, sustainability, social and environmental justice are considered complex or wicked problems. To understand and begin to address these, a strategic leadership toolkit is needed. Week-by-week, this seminar will help build that toolkit. We’ll review what wicked problems are, how change happens, and the roles that we can play as public health leaders; we’ll revisit methods used to rapidly assess and evaluate the current state, and compare that to the ideal (future) state; we’ll practice compiling an evidence base for use to inform actions; and we’ll practice professional writing (white papers) and oral pitches. Students will define a project scope, develop a work plan, conduct a literature review, draft a project report outline, identify and accessed relevant data, reviewed data to inform action, and draft a project report that could be submitted to a ‘client’.