The courses will engage students, health care providers, nurses and other community members in conversations about vital issues related to health and healthcare:
- economic inequality;
- climate change and other environmental crises;
- famine;
- epidemics;
- failures of the consumer-driven healthcare model;
- the impact of health information technology on healthcare provision;
- corporate healthcare providers; global health governance;
- international trade agreements;
- nurse migration;
- impacts of private pharmaceutical companies on drug research and distribution;
- commodity food speculation: genetically-modified organisms;
- privatization of public resources and services;
- cuts in spending on social programs;
- human rights; and women’s movements for health around the world.
Through the certificate program, students will come to understand patient advocacy as advocacy for humanity by engaging with questions such as:
How a society built on values of caring, compassion, and community might look? How does your role as a patient advocate extends beyond the bedside and into your community?
How pressing social and economic issues of our time, such as extreme poverty, climate change, and famine affects who lives and who dies?
How women’s global health leaders have begun to organize to heal the world, to transform human desperation into human dignity?