Elective courses

Prerequisites: None

Course Description: Beginning in 1981 when the first case of HIV was diagnosed, the HIV and AIDs epidemic has dramatically altered the social, cultural, economic, political and demographic landscape worldwide. Understanding the drivers and the implications of this epidemic of individuals, families, communities and countries requires insight into the myriad of biological, socio-cultural and political factors that shape individual knowledge and behavior, access to preventive and treatment modalities, as well as the political and international responses to the epidemic.

The purpose of this course is to provide an overview of the social and behavioral factors that influence the transmission and prevention of HIV and AIDs worldwide. Topics to be covered include the natural history and epidemiology of the AIDS virus, the mechanisms of transmission, high risk and vulnerable populations, social determinants of risk and vulnerability, theoretical foundations for HIV prevention programs, primary and secondary HIV prevention strategies, treatment of HIV and AIDS, and implications of HIV and AIDS for individuals, families, communities and countries.

Prerequisites: None

Course Description: This course is designed to provide graduate and undergraduate nursing students with an in-depth understanding of palliative care focusing on delivery of patient/family centered care in a variety of healthcare practice environments. Using the ELNEC (End of Life Nursing Education Consortium) undergraduate nursing student curriculum or APRN curriculum, students will gain knowledge about the comprehensive delivery of quality palliative care during curative concurrent therapies through transitions to comfort-focused care. Ethical aspects, values and self-awareness will be explored as it influences delivery of care. Students will gain enhanced appreciation for a multidisciplinary team approach to care of the seriously ill patient. Students will develop interpersonal communication skills that are valuable when caring for patients with serious illness and working with families and interdisciplinary providers. This course will teach components of holistic care used along the palliative care continuum addressing spiritual, social, physical and psychological needs. The student will obtain a palliative care nursing education certificate of completion that can be placed in their portfolio.

Prerequisites: None

Course Description: This elective course is designed to provide undergraduate students with the background to understand gender-based violence and the skills necessary to provide advocacy services to survivors. Our story on gender-based violence will include attention to intimate partner violence, stalking, sexual harassment, child abuse, sexual assault, and human trafficking. This course utilizes a 360-degree framework which recognizes that everything is interconnected and takes into consideration the multiple lenses through which each individual understands gender-based violence from a broad, holistic context. We will also examine gender-based violence utilizing other perspectives including feminist, ecological, and social justice. This course will introduce students to the roots of gender-based violence, the social and cultural context in which it occurs, the mental and physical health impact, justice and restitution frameworks, and will explore approaches to changing those structures in order to reduce or end it. Students will develop the skills to think critically about the local and global impact of gender-based violence, how it intersects with other forms of oppression and to develop an understanding of these issues that will be useful intellectually, personally, and professionally.

Prerequisites: None

Course Description: This course prepares students to lead in data driven advocacy for impact on population health and professional practice within the context of a diverse and changing social and political environment.

Students will develop the skills necessary to seek out and analyze available data and evidence in order to evaluate existing policy, identify policy problems, and develop and justify innovative policy solutions.

Students will consider options and devise new strategies for collaborating and communicating with various stakeholders to influence change. Evaluating the synergies between political power and the policy process is a theme throughout the course.

Prerequisites: None

Course Description: This inter-professional course is designed for students in: dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and social work.  The course allows health professional students to gain an understanding of how each discipline contributes to the healthcare team and the importance of effective communication and team collaboration to clinical decision making.

Prerequisites: None

Course Description: This graduate-level course will deepen the understanding of how informatics fundamentally impacts care process, access, outcomes, value, costs and efficiency across diverse settings and populations. In addition to the introduction of fundamental informatics theories, principles, and practices, this course highlights the identification, definition, coordination, acquisition, storage, analysis, and communication of data as part of critical success factors for the organization and diverse users. Policy dimensions, particularly regarding patient engagement in information management and exchange, equitable access and the adoption of interoperability standards and regulations, will be incorporated. Tomorrow's leaders are those who have a deep understanding of the value of data as a strategic asset to the organization and the profession. The increasing importance of evidence, data analytics, and strategic thinking to achieve the organization's mission are core to this enhanced level of thinking.

Prerequisites: None

Course Description: This elective course is designed to coincide with the School of Nursing annual Global Summer Institute that takes place in May of each year. It will provide graduate students and upper level undergraduate students with the knowledge and skills to work in interdisciplinary groups to solve real-world global health issues with domestic and international partners. Students will have the opportunity to network with practitioners, researchers, and professionals across the globe during the Summer Institute. Students will also develop the skills to think critically about local and global health issues including potential solutions to address issues at the individual, interpersonal, community, or societal level that will contribute to an understanding of these issues that will be useful intellectually, personally, and professionally.

Prerequisites: None

Course Description: This course is a  workshop-based inter-professional education course offered by the School of Social Work in partnership with the School of Nursing and School of Education. It is the first course in a 3-course sequence in Trauma-Informed Practice (TIP). This first course  will provide basic, foundational knowledge about the cognitive, social-emotional, behavioral, and health-related outcomes of trauma in children. A key focus of the course will be on enhancing awareness of trauma in children; assessing and responding to the needs of children who encounter trauma; and changing systems to become more responsive to vulnerable children and their families. Exploration of factors known to promote resilience and well-being will be emphasized and examined throughout the course. The course will examine principles of interprofessional education, which focuses on helping students in the professions of social work, nursing, and education work collaboratively in generalist and specialty practice roles.

Prerequisites: HS 540

Course Description: This course will provide foundational knowledge about trauma-informed practice. A primary goal is preparing students for interprofessional approaches to trauma-informed prevention and intervention. A key focus will be on teachers, social workers, and nurses collaborating to use specific trauma-informed practices for addressing young people's academic, social-emotional, behavioral, and health needs.

Prerequisites: HS 540

Course Description: This course will provide foundational knowledge about developing and sustaining a school or organizational culture that is trauma-informed. The course will incorporate principles of interprofessional education, which focuses on helping students in the professions work collaboratively in generalist and specialty practice roles. A primary goal of the course is to prepare students to use interprofessional and team-based strategies to achieve organizational change. A key focus will be on teachers, social workers, and nurses going beyond their practice role to collaborate on organizational work. Examples including educating colleagues, planning for a long-term project, evaluating programs, and obtaining resources to sustain collaborative models and programs to address trauma in schools

Prerequisites: HS 510

Course Description: A sociotechnical approach is used with complex organizational change that recognizes the interaction between diverse people, innovation, and technology in the workplace. The synergy between the socio and technical approaches lead to the rise of productivity and wellbeing of the employee. This course explores components of sociotechnical frameworks that underlie for the development, deployment, and maintenance of organizational change. Strategic planning and strategies used to analyze, and model, health systems requirements, are emphasized. New and emerging innovations are assessed for their impact and potential strategic value to the organization.

Prerequisites: None

Course Description: The exponential growth of healthcare innovations and implementation require ongoing evaluation of the new or significantly improved products, services, processes, programs, and systems. This course provides an overall review of methods for evaluation of healthcare programs, and systems, including methods and challenges  unique to the evaluation of health information systems and technologies. A variety of evaluation frameworks, standards, and tools will be examined. Examples of program and system evaluation will be discussed and analyzed.

Prerequisites: HS 530 and Nursing MSN, DNP, or PhD standing

Course Description: This elective course is designed to coincide with the School of Nursing annual Global Summer Institute that takes place in May of each year. It will provide graduate students with the knowledge and skills to present their global health projects and ideas to interdisciplinary groups of domestic and international partners. This course will introduce students to a broader understanding of evidence-based practice, policy, and leadership related to global health. Students will have the opportunity to network with practitioners, researchers, and professionals across the globe during the Summer Institute. Students will also develop critical skills necessary for developing, implementing, and evaluating complex global health projects.

Prerequisites: None

Course Description: This is a quantitative graduate course that provides a general of the principles, concepts, techniques, tools and services for managing, harmonizing, aggregating, preprocessing, modeling, analyzing and interpreting large, multi-source, incomplete, incongruent, and heterogeneous data (Big Data). Students will be exposed to common challenges related to handling Big Data, the enormous opportunities and power associated with our ability to interrogate such complex datasets, extract useful information, derived new knowledge, and provide actionable forecasting. Biomedical, healthcare, and social datasets will provide context for addressing specific driving challenges. Students will learn about modern data analytic techniques and develop skills for importing and exporting, cleaning and fusing, modeling and visualizing, analyzing and synthesizing complex datasets. The collaborative design, implementation, sharing and community validation of high-throughput analytic workflows will be emphasized throughout the course.

This course aims to build computational abilities, inferential thinking, and practical skills for tackling core data scientific challenges. It explores foundational concepts in data management, processing, statistical computing, and dynamic visualization using modern programming tools and agile web-services. Open-science concepts, ideas, and protocols are illustrated through examples of real observational, simulated and research-derived datasets. Some prior quantitative experience in programming, calculus, statistics, mathematical models, or linear algebra will be necessary.

Prerequisites: None

Course Description: Epidemiology is the discipline devoted to investigating patterns, causes, and effects of disease in populations. This course will provide a general overview of the principles, concepts, and methods of epidemiologic research for students who have no prior experience in epidemiology.

Prerequisites: A quantitative course, or instructor permission

Course Description: This course introduces student to applied inference methods in studies involving multiple variables.  Specific methods that will be discussed include data presentation and summary, probability, variable distributions, hypothesis testing, analysis of variance, correlation models, and linear regression models.  This course will emphasize the scientific formulation, analytical modeling, computational tools and applied statistical inference in diverse health-sciences problems.  Data interrogation, modeling approaches, rigorous interpretation and inference will be emphasized throughout.

Prerequisites: HS 851 or an equivalent course, or instructor permission

Course Description: This research methods course provides a foundation for using statistical methods in order to investigate health-related research questions. The course builds on concepts learned in prerequisite course HS 851 including univariate statistics; study design; data acquisition and management; and conceptual modeling. Modeling topics covered in the course include simple linear regressions, generalized linear models, and linear mixed models. Teaching methods include lectures, laboratory sessions, assigned readings, assignments, and critique of scientific papers. Assessment of the student's knowledge and understanding of the material will culminate in an empirical research project that addresses a research question using linear models. This is an applied graduate-level course and emphasizes the practical aspects of statistical methods.

Prerequisites: None

Course description: This course introduces global health concepts and the network of organizations working to advance health care internationally.  Emphasis is on global burden of disease, determinants of health and importance of interdisciplinary approach to health care delivery.  Provide students with a broad introduction to programs, systems and policies affecting global health.  Will explore facets of the global health care delivery system, health care economics and the political process and its impact on the health of individuals and populations.

Prerequisites: NURS 420

Course Description: Interdisciplinary clinically focused elective course.  Explores issues that directly or indirectly affect health in low and middle resource countries.  Students will learn about health care delivery systems with a focus on global/public health concepts and health promotion and risk reduction.  Purpose is to broaden the student's worldview and global perspectives of health care issues.  Emphasis is on health equity among nations and for all people.

Prerequisites: UMSN Office of Global Affairs approved field experience

Course Description: This course allows students to prepare for and participate in engaged learning opportunities in global health. Students will participate in seminar meetings focused on learning about the culture, health systems and history of the countries, populations or cultures they will be immersed in, self-paced learning on community engagement and then will have the opportunity to have a planned and approved immersion experience to learn about health systems and community health needs. Learning experiences can occur virtually or in-person, may include visits to local hospitals, health centers, community groups and nongovernmental organizations as well as participating with local community health workers and/or nursing students in health promotion activities.

Prerequisites: None

Course Description: This course introduces global health concepts and the network of organizations working to advance health care internationally. Emphasis is on global burden of disease, determinants of health and importance of interdisciplinary approach to health care delivery. Provides students with a broad introduction to programs, systems and policies affecting global health. We will consider how history, culture, politics and social

institutions influence health and health systems. The purpose of the course is to broaden the student's worldview and global perspective on health care issues. Emphasis for this course is on health equity among nations and for all people.

Prerequisites: Junior- or senior-level undergraduate standing or graduate standing

Course Description: This course introduces students to the knowledge, skills, and practical tools needed to successfully lead within global public health systems. Students will be introduced to global health issues of two kinds: (1) fundamental cross-cutting issues such as the relationship between global health and economic development and (2) selected thematic areas such as child survival, HIV/AIDS and global tobacco control. The course will both contextualize current efforts in global health historically and describe likely future trends. Readings will be drawn from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including history, political science, economics, sociology and anthropology. This course is designed to equip students with critical perspectives and resources they will need for leadership roles in nursing and public health in our increasingly small and interdependent world.

Prerequisites: Junior- or senior-level undergraduate standing or graduate standing and enrollment in UMSN’s Global Health Concentration.

Course Description: This course introduces students to the knowledge, skills, and practical tools needed to successfully lead within global public health systems. Students will be introduced to fundamental cross-cutting factors that influence health systems such as governance and selected thematic areas such as infectious diseases and maternal-child health. The course will both contextualize current efforts in global health historically and describe likely future trends. The seminar component provides students the opportunity to delve more deeply into global health systems, leadership in global health, partnerships and collaborations, and solutions for global health challenges. The course will equip students with critical perspectives and resources they will need for leadership roles in nursing and public health in our increasingly small and interdependent world.