Health Care Policy (HCP)

HCP 301 Global Health Care Systems 3 Credits

Global Health Care Systems is an introduction to visions of global health care, drawing upon the fields of medical anthropology, global public health, and public policy. The course focuses upon different understandings of health care, reflected in the actual health systems in place around the world. Because responsible health-giving health systems respond to societies’ changing needs and situations, students will learn about the skills needed for this kind of problem-solving, but also come to understand that there is an urgent and vital global need for the exchange of ideas in global health care systems.

HCP 302 Environmental Epidemiology, Pandemics and Globalization 3 Credits

This course is intended to provide basic knowledge of principles and methods of environmental epidemiology for students whose career interests in a health-related field may include using epidemiologic information. The course presents a holistic view of global health by crossing several disciplines, including medical anthropology and disease history, focusing upon the social processes by which groups are stigmatized during disease outbreaks, and public health policies for confronting outbreaks of epidemics and pandemics. The course emphasizes the conceptual aspects of epidemiologic investigation and application of these concepts in global health policy and related professions. Topics include: disease surveillance; population screening; interpreting epidemiologic associations, and the health risks and benefits of globalization. Salient foci will be: the evaluation of the role of health diplomacy in addressing shared global health problems among countries, and the evaluation of cultural, ethical, social, systemic, and anthropological determinants of global health problems.

HCP 303 Global Health and Human Rights 3 Credits

This course introduces students to the basic concepts of human rights and their links to national/global health, as well as to issues where human rights and health collide. Students will become familiar with global efforts for developing practical and effective responses to global health challenges with a human rights framework.

HCP 304 Health Policy, Administration, and Compliance 3 Credits

Health Policy, Administration, and Compliance explores the politics of health care policy at the local level. The course identifies and evaluates various measures of the health and function of populations, organizations, partnerships, systems, and communities. The course provides students with an overview of the realities, challenges, and requirements of practicing community oriented primary health care.

HCP 450 Seminar in Health Care Policy 3 Credits

Rider University is uniquely positioned through Global Studies to have access to the nongovernmental organization United Front against River Blindness (UFAR). It is an Africaninspired, U.S.-based nonprofit and tax exempt organization. Its primary mission has been to participate in partnerships with other global health organizations in the elimination of onchocerciasis (river blindness), as a major public health problem in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). UFAR was founded and registered in the U.S. in 2004 by Dr. Daniel Shungu, a former Merck & Co. Inc. employee, who is a Congolese by birth and a naturalized U.S. citizen. The U.S. office is in Lawrenceville, N.J. and the Congo office is in Kinshasa, DRC. Dr. Roberta Fiske-Rusciano of Rider University’s Global Studies faculty is a founding UFAR board member and has hosted Dr. Shungu several times in her course Global Perspectives on Health and Illness. For the past eleven years UFAR in partnership with several organizations (World Health Organization, Sightsavers Itl., Merck, DRC coalition group for onchocerciasis, and the DRC Health Minister, have successfully treated three million (as of 2015) Congolese with Ivermectin (Mectizan), donated by Merck and Co., Inc. Taken once a year for approximately ten years prevents infection of river blindness, by interrupting the cycle of the parasite. Because of UFAR’s continued success in its mission, it has been asked to expand its work to include more neglected tropical diseases, using the same method of health delivery system: communitydirected treatment with the appropriate medicament, e.g. Ivermectin. Now that treatments of other diseases have been added to UFAR’s mission (trachoma, lymphatic filariasis, shistosomiasis, guinea worm and helminthes infestations), additional medical treatments are scheduled to be added once these conditions are thoroughly mapped in the population.

HCP 491 Health Care Policy Internship 1-3 Credits

Students will complete an internship that will build on prior work in the HCP major.