Courses

Dr. Ladin teaches courses in health policy, research methods, public health ethics, health disparities, and medical ethics.

Current Course Offerings

Community Health 106: Health, Ethics, and Policy. Ethical analysis has become an increasingly integral part of health policy and public health. A foundation in normative ethics and political philosophy is central to policy and medical decision-making because at the core of many policy and medical debates lie questions of distributive justice. This course will focus on evaluating how different values, ethical approaches, and evidence should inform policy making, clinical medicine, and public health practice. How should scarce resources, like organs for transplantation or hospital beds, be allocated? How much personal responsibility do people have for their own health and health behaviors? How much should they be held accountable for their health outcomes? How should public health effectively balance principles of equity and efficiency? Should medicine or public policy be specifically concerned with the health of underserved populations? This course aims to provide students with the skills necessary for analyzing and contributing meaningfully to current debates in health policy and medicine from an ethics perspective. This course will be taught using a case-method approach. Students will be required to prepare the cases and participate actively in class discussions. Together, we will consider the ethical dimensions of a range of leading issues in public health and health policy, including: organ transplantation, use of cost-effectiveness and comparative effectiveness in coverage decisions, resource allocation for vulnerable populations, personal responsibility for health, and the “right” to health care. Our time together will be spent primarily in discussion and debate, guided by myself and by student case discussants who will be leading the ethical analysis of various cases.

Community Health 141: Research in Community Health. Student participation in an ongoing research program led by a Community Health faculty member. Emphasis on faculty mentoring of students to promote acquisition of research skills. Skills taught may include conducting literature reviews, participant outreach and recruitment, measurement tool development, qualitative and quantitative data collection, data analysis, and development of written products and presentations. Weekly lab meetings instead of class sessions. Students produce a tangible product (e.g., presentation to the lab group on their work, academic poster, literature review).

Community Health 183: Technology in Healthcare. Scientific and technological advances in genomics, synthetic biology, big data, and artificial intelligence show promise in health care. Discussion of ethical issues pertaining to safety, appropriateness, and impact. Topics related to the ethical, legal and social issues of technology may include xenotransplantation; algorithmic bias and fairness in clinical prediction models; telehealth, and biomedical devices. Prerequisites: CH 1, CH 2, CH 11, CH 30, CH 34, & CH 36 or instructor permission.

Previous Course Offerings

Community Health 188-15 Social Networks and Social Support: How Who You Know Could Save Your Life. We are connected, and as a result, so is our health. In this course, we examine the ways in which people are connected and how various dimensions of connectedness and social support affect our health and health behaviors. This class will examine how social support and social networks play a role in determining health and health care decision-making. Students will have the opportunity to contribute to this exciting and emerging research area by designing and pursuing a research project related to health and social networks or social supports.

Occupational Therapy 209: Clinical Research. Exploration of the components of the research process in the context of occupational therapy. Includes developing research questions, conducting a literature search and review, data collection and data analysis, drawing conclusions from data, ethics in research, and sharing research findings. Prerequisite: Introductory statistics.