Eating right and exercising are critical to leading a healthy lifestyle, but some factors are simply out of people’s control.
Take the environment. Humans can’t entirely control its impact on their health, but they can do more to understand its complexity. Because of the demand for greater knowledge in this field, the university is offering five new courses this summer, covering areas such as environmental justice, global health, and community engagement.
The classes, taught by affiliates of the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, should give students an edge on topics that are becoming increasingly important domestically and abroad, said the institute’s director, Donald Milton.
Michael Grantham, an institute researcher and university professor, taught one of the courses, MIEH 321: Syphilis to SARS: Climate Change, Development and Emergence of Infectious Diseases, online in summer 2012. Because of the course’s popularity, the university will continue offering it in the fall at the University of Maryland Shady Grove campus.
His goal is to determine “some of the factors that have led to disease emergence in the past and look at those factors that are happening now and have a better idea of what to watch for,” Grantham said.
The course focuses on the rapid spread of infectious diseases and resistance to antibiotic drugs, both prevalent problems, Grantham said.
“Things are definitely much more mobile now than they used to be,” he said. “The emergence of a disease can have a much more widespread effect nowadays than, say, in the 1700s, when it took months to go from continent to continent.”
Climate change, pollution and other environmental factors can exacerbate these issues, especially in parts of the world where safe sources of food and water are scarce, said Maurice Rocque, the institute’s coordinator.
Professor Amy Sapkota will be teaching MIEH 275: Global Environmental Health: How Our Fouled Fishbowl Impacts Health and How we Can Turn the Tide, which will address these problems on a global scale.
“It’ll really talk about the intersection of all of these things and how the environment is playing a role in health around the world and how this is really a security threat,” Rocque said.
But environmental health problems hit very close to home as well.
Professor Sacoby Wilson will be teaching three courses on environmental justice focusing on local communities. The only course to be taught in person is MIEH 280: Community Engagement, Citizen Science to Participatory Action Research: Saving the World One Community at a Time. Focusing on service and learning, students will have a chance to work with communities in the county that are grappling with food access issues, Washington residents affected by contamination of the Anacostia River and some populations in South Baltimore suffering from industrial pollution, Wilson said.
“At the end, students will be able to see the issues up front and in person and hopefully be able to address some of the problems that are affecting those communities,” Wilson said.
His other two courses, online offerings MIEH 210: Environmental Justice, Racism, and Environmental Health Disparities: How Where You Live Can Kill You! and MEIH 215: The Built Environment and Public Health: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly will focus on community planning and the health disparities between wealthy and poor communities.
However, these classes are too important to only be offered online, said Nusheen Majidi, a sophomore behavioral and community health and psychology major.
“I don’t think online classes are as effective,” she said. “Students always figure out how to get around them one way or another. [Professors] can’t really drive their point home and put their passion and knowledge into it online. People should know this information because it’s our future.”
Rocque said he hopes some of the courses will become I-series courses if the department can come up with additional funding.
Because community health and public health are such broad majors, Majidi said concentrations in subjects such as environmental health and global health should be offered within the field.
Students who choose any of the university’s public health tracks can go on to a range of valuable and rewarding careers, Wilson said.
“Students who go into public health get the opportunity to work in government and policy, to work in nonprofits, community organizations and to work globally,” he said. “That’s the power of public health. It’s important to everyone everywhere.”
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