Population Health in a Global Context Minor

Overview

The Global Health Minor, officially the Population Health in a Global Context Minor, offers undergraduate students an in-depth look at global health through diverse coursework and a required cross-cultural immersion experience. The minor provides unique opportunities to deepen students’ understanding of health challenges across diverse populations and global settings.

Through interdisciplinary coursework and immersive experiences, students gain valuable insights into how culture, environment, and policy shape health outcomes worldwide. Students who complete the minor will develop critical competencies in global population health, cross-cultural understanding, and issues impacting human and planetary health.

 
 
 
 

Learning Objectives

Students will develop competencies in three domains:

  1. Global burden of disease

    Understand variations in the causes of morbidity, mortality, and disability around the world and over time, and analyze major public health efforts to reduce global health disparities.

  2. Context and culture

    Develop contextual knowledge of culture, language, history, politics, and resources in specific regions outside the United States, and understand how that context influences health, health systems, and social determinants of health.

  3. Cross-cutting global concerns

    Explore the implications for human health of cross-cutting global concerns such as climate change, planetary health, infectious disease, human rights, migration, conflict, and disasters.

The minor is organized around three major learning domains: (1) Global burden of disease, (2) Context and culture, and (3) Cross-cutting global concerns.

Students are required to complete 15 credits focused on global health, chosen from approved global health electives at UMSN and across the U-M campus, with at least one course from each learning domain. Up to 6 credits of language courses may be applied.

Global Health Immersion Experience

Students are required to complete a Global Health Immersion Experience, a “live and work” cross-cultural opportunity designed to challenge them. The experience must provide sufficient duration and cultural distance to build competencies in the three core learning objectives.

Global Health Immersion Experiences are unique, high-impact practices that foster student inquiry, critical reflexivity, and professional development that cannot be obtained in a traditional classroom setting. Potential experiences should be reviewed and approved by the Office of Global Affairs (OGA).

Global Health Immersion Experiences are preferably conducted abroad. Domestic field placements may be used as an alternative if the community of engagement differs substantially from the student’s own by cultural heritage, national or ethnic origin, dominant language, or other relevant factors, and the student has prior written approval from the Office of Global Affairs.

Global Health Immersion Experiences Include

  • UMSN education abroad program
  • U-M education abroad program
  • Non-U-M education abroad program with another university or directly with a third-party provider*
  • U-M course with fieldwork or immersion in the United States*
  • Work, internship, or volunteer program*
  • Project-based learning and/or research with faculty supervision*

*Requires prior written approval from OGA.

Prerequisites and Corequisites

Prerequisites and corequisites include good academic standing based on an earned U-M GPA of at least 2.0.

First-year students are advised to wait until their second semester to declare the minor but are highly encouraged to take approved minor electives during their first year when possible.

Transfer students are eligible to declare during their first semester at U-M. Their coursework will be evaluated for relevant electives that meet the Global Health Minor learning domains.