Objective

The primary goal of the curriculum is to develop a shared language and to critically examine some of the most important population health concepts and methodologies and health and society problems. This curriculum includes:

• Weekly scholar seminars on health and society
• Weekly Research in Progress seminars (with RWJ Clinical Scholars bi-monthly)
• Scholar Journal Clubs with critical reviews of seminal population health readings
• Meetings with visiting faculty
• Health Policy Course taught by David Asch and HSSP Alumus David Grande for first year scholars

Research in Progress Seminar

This seminar is aimed at scholars both in the Health & Society and Clinical Scholar program at Penn.

It features work that is in development or in progress--work that could benefit from the advice of a diverse audience of colleagues. Our hope is that presenters will gain advice and insight, that the two scholar groups will have opportunity for exposure to the other group's research perspective, and everyone will gain some knowledge and methodological expertise.

Scholar Seminar in Health and Society

The weekly Scholar seminar uses directed readings and discussions focused in the following general areas:

• History, culture, and causality
• Population health problems
• Conceptual frameworks for population health
• Biological determinants of population health
• Intervention sciences
• Population health methodologies

Scholars will themselves organize and lead some sessions.

Suggested Population Health Readings

Adler, N., Marmot, M., McEwen, B. and Stewart, J. "Socioeconomic Status and Health in Industrial Nations: Social, Psychological, and Biological Pathways." Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. Vol 896, New York, 1999

Berkman, L. and Kawachi, I. (2000). "Social Epidemiology." Oxford Press, New York

Berkman, L. and Syme, L. 1979 "Social Networks, Host Resistance, and Mortality: A Nine-Year Follow-Up study of Alameda County Residents." American Journal of Epidemiology 109: 186-204

Bunker, J. "Medicine Matters After All". J. Royal Coll. Phys. London 29(2): 105-112, 1995

Cassel, John. 1976 "The Contribution of the Social Environment to Host Resistance." American Journal of Epidemiology 104: 107-123.

Cockerham, W. C., Ritten, A., Abel T. 1997. "Conceptualizing contemporary health lifestyles. Moving beyond Weber." Sociol. Q. 38:321-342

Drummond, M. and Stoddart, G. "Assessment of Health Producing Measures Across Different Sectors." Health Policy 33:219-231, 1995

Durkheim, E. (1897, 1951) "Suicide: a case study in sociology." Glencoe, IL: Free Press

Evans, R. G., Barer, M. L. and Marmor, T. R. "Why are Some People Healthy and Others Not?" The Determinants of Health of Populations. Aldine d Gruyter, Hawthorne, NY, 1994.

Field, M. and Gold, M. (editors). "Summarizing Population Health: Directions for the Development and Application of Population Metrics." Institute of Medicine, National Academy Press, Washington D.C. 1998

Fuchs, V. "Who Shall Live?" Basic Books, New York, 1974

Garrett, L. Betrayal of Trust: "The Collapse of Global Public Health", Hyperion, 2001

Geronimus, Arline, John Bound, Timothy Waidman, Marianne Hillemeier, and Patricia Burns. 1996. "Excess Mortality Among Blacks and Whites in the United States." New England Journal of Medicine 335: 1552-1558

House, James S., Karl R. Landis, and Debra Umberson. 1988. "Social Relationships and Health." Science 241: 540-545.

Karasek, RA and Theorell, T. 1990. "Healthy Work." New York: Basic Books

Keating, D. and Hertzman, C. "Developmental Health and the Wealth of Nations: Social, Biological and Educational Dynamics." Guilford, New York 1999

Kennedy, Bruce P., Ichiro Kawachi, and D. Prothrow-Stith. 1996. "Income Distribution and Mortality: Cross-sectional Ecological Study of the Robin Hood Index in the United States." British Medical Journal 312:1004-1007.

Kindig, D. "Purchasing Population Health: Aligning Financial Incentives to Improve Health Outcomes." Health Services Research 33(2): 223-242, 1998

Leon D, Walt G (eds.) "Poverty, Inequality and Health." Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Link, Bruce G. and Jo Phelan. 1995. "Social Conditions as Fundamental Causes of Disease." Journal of Health and Social Behavior (Extra Issue): 80-94 OR Link, B. G., Phelan, J. C. Understanding sociodemographic differences in health - the role of fundamental social causes. AJPH 86: 471-472, 1996.

Lynch, John W., George Davey Smith, George A. Kaplan, and James S. House. 2000. "Income Inequality and Mortality: Importance to Health of Individual Income, Psychosocial Environment, or Material Conditions." British Medical Journal 320: 1200-1204.

Macinko, J. and Starfield, B. "The Utility of Social Capital in Research on Health Determinants." Milbank Quarterly 79(3): 387-427, 2001.

Marmot, M. and Richard G. Wilkinson (eds.) "Social Determinants of Health." Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Marmot, M. G., Rose, G., Shipley, M., Hamilton, P. J. S. "Employment grade and coronary heart disease in British civil servants." Journal of Epidemilogy and Community Health 1978; 32: 244-249

Marmot, Michael, G. Davey Smith, S. Stansfeld, C. Patel, F. North, J. Head, I. White, E. Brunner, and A. Feeney. 1991 "Health Inequalities Among British Civil Servants: The Whitehall II Study." Lancet 337 (8754): 1387-1393.

McGinnis, J. M. & Foege, W. H. (1993)."Actual causes of death in the United States." Journal of the American Medical Association, 270(18), 2207-2212

McKeown, T. "The Role of Medicine: Dream, Mirage, or Nemesis." Princeton University Press, 1979

Murray, C. J. L. & Lopez, A. D. (1996) "The Global Burden of Disease." Summary. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press

Preston, S. H. 1975 "The Changing Relation between Mortality and the Level of Economic Development." Population Studies. 29: 231-248

Preston, S. H. and Haines, M. R. "Fatal years: child mortality in late nineteenth century America." Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, c1991

Putnam, R. D. "Bowling Alone: the collapse and revival of American community." New York: Simon & Schuster, c2000.

Rose, G. "Sick individuals and sick populations" International Journal of Epidemiology. 14(1), 32-38, 1985 OR Rose G. The Strategy of Preventive Medicine. Oxford University Press, Oxford England, 1992.

Sen A. "Development as freedom." New York: Knopf, 1999.

Smedley, B. D. and S. L. Syme (eds.) "Promoting health. Intervention Strategies from Social and Behavioral Research." Washington DC: Institute of Medicine/ National Academy Press, 2000.

Susser, M. "Causal thinking in the health sciences, concepts and strategies of epidemiology." New York: Oxford University Press, 1973

Susser, Mervyn, William Watson, and Kim Hopper.1985 "Sociology in Medicine." New York: Oxford University Press

Wilkinson, Richard G. 1996. "Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality." London: Routledge.