An examination of a current topic in inequality, inequity, marginalization, social exclusion, and health outcomes. Topics may include: health and homelessness, poverty and sexual health, political conflict and refugee health. The course will provide students with relevant information about social context and health policy, but will focus on the physical and mental health impacts of various forms of inequity.

Drawing on insights from critical social theory and on the experience of community partners, this course critically explores the ethics, economics, and politics of care and mutual aid. The course begins with a focus on informal care in our everyday lives, including self-care. We then move on to interrogate theories of care and care work in a variety of settings including schools, community health centres, hospitals, and long-term care facilities. The course is interdisciplinary, drawing on insights from scholarship across the humanities, social sciences, medicine, and public health.

This course is designed to provide an in-depth understanding of the potential effects on human health of exposure to environmental contaminants, with special attention to population groups particularly vulnerable to toxic insults.

Violence is a significant public health, human rights, and human development problem that impacts millions of people worldwide. Relying on a critical public health perspective, critical social theories, and local and global case studies on anti-oppression, this course explores structural (causes of) violence, the impact violence has on (public) health and human development, and societal responses to treatment, prevention, and social transformation.

An examination of a current topic in health and wellness. Topics may include: disability, addiction, psychosocial wellbeing, social activism around health issues, Wellness Indices, Community Needs and Assets Appraisals. The course will focus on the contributing historical, social, and/or cultural factors, as well as relevant health policies.

An examination of a current topic in global health, especially a disease or condition that predominantly impacts populations in low-income countries. The specific topic will vary from year to year. Topics may include: HIV/AIDS; war and violence, insect-borne diseases; policies and politics of water and sanitation; reproductive health and population policies, etc. The course will focus on historical factors, socio-political contexts, and health policies.

This advanced seminar course explores contemporary topics in global health governance as they are being discussed and debated by world leaders at key international summits, such as the World Health Summit. After developing an understanding of the historical and political economy context of the main actors and instruments involved in global health governance, contemporary global health challenges are explored. Topics and cases change based on global priorities and student interests, but can include: the impact of international trade regimes on global health inequities; the role transnational corporations and non-governmental organizations play in shaping the global health agenda; the impact globalization has had on universal health care and health human resources in low-income countries; and health care during complex humanitarian crises.

This advanced seminar will provide intensive study of a selected topic in and/or theoretical questions about the health humanities. Topics will vary by instructor and term but may include narrative medicine, stories of illness and healing, representations of older age and aging in literature and film, AIDS and/or cancer writing, representations of death and dying in literature and film, and the role of creative arts in health.

In this advanced seminar students will examine older age using the methods and materials of the humanities, with particular focus on: 1) the representation of aging and older age in the arts; and 2) the role of arts-based therapies and research initiatives involving older people and/or the aging process.

An examination of a health topic in historical perspective. The specific topics will vary from year to year, and may include: histories of race, racialization, and health policy; history of a specific medical tradition; or histories of specific health conditions, their medical and popular representations, and their treatment (e.g. historical changes in the understanding and representation of leprosy or depression).

An examination of a current topic in Health Humanities. The specific topic will vary from year to year.

This seminar course explores stories of health, illness, and disability that are in some way tied to the City of Toronto. It asks how the Canadian healthcare setting impacts the creation of illness narratives. Topics will include major theorizations of illness storytelling (“restitution”, “chaos,” and “quest” narratives); narrative medicine; ethics and digital health storytelling.

Advanced students of Health Humanities already know that creative work about important contemporary issues in health can help doctors, patients, and the public understand and live through complex experiences. But now, as health humanities practitioners, do we go about making new creative works and putting them out into the world? This upper-level seminar explores Documentary and Memoir as a political practice and supports students already versed in the principles and methods of health humanities in developing their own original work. Through a workshop format, students encounter artistic and compositional practices of documentary and memoir writing, film, and theatre to draw conclusions about what makes a documentary voice compelling, and consider the impact of works as a modality for communicating human experiences of health, illness, and disability through these mediated expressions.

In this year-long directed research course, the student will work with a faculty supervisor to complete an original undergraduate research project. During fall term the student will prepare the research proposal and ethics protocol, and begin data collection. In the winter term the student will complete data collection, analysis, and write-up.

This course will investigate school- and community-based health education efforts that approach health as a complex social, biological, and cultural experience; critique and challenge prevailing understandings of health; and offer alternative theoretical, pedagogical, and curricular approaches to health and illness. Issues such as sexuality, gender, nation, race, social class, age, ability, and indigeneity will be central concerns in this study of health pedagogy, curriculum, and promotion.

The quality of our health care system is dependent on initial and ongoing education supporting our health professionals. In response to ongoing and new challenges in health care, governments and institutions respond with novel ideas of enacting health care in improved ways. Health care institutions, policy makers, and the public have expectations of highly skilled, knowledgeable, and prepared individuals. As our understanding of health and health systems change, these expectations also change. Keeping up is in part the work of health professions education. Preparing individuals for these dynamic, complex, in some cases unpredictable, and everchanging health care service demands is necessary and complex. In this course, we explore the role and governance, structure, and contemporary multidisciplinary scientific advances of initial and continuing health professions education as a means of supporting the practice and quality of health care. We also explore the future of health professions and how health professions education is working to keep up.

This course will delve into health promotion's inequities, notably those impacting Black communities. We examine how social determinants intersect with anti-Black racism, particularly during pandemics like HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. The Toronto Board of Health's 2020 declaration of anti-Black racism as a public health crisis underscores the urgency of addressing this issue, as Black Canadians continue to face disproportionate health disparities in areas such as life expectancy and chronic diseases.

This course is designed to permit critical analysis of current topics relevant to the broad topic of paramedicine. Students will work independently but under the supervision of an industry leader, practitioner and/or researcher involved in paramedicine, who will guide the in-depth study/research. Students report to the course instructor and paramedicine program supervisor to complete course information and their formal registration.

History, theory and practice of international development, and current approaches and debates in international development studies. The course explores the evolution of policy and practice in international development and the academic discourses that surround it. Lectures by various faculty and guests will explore the multi-disciplinary nature of international development studies. This course is a prerequisite for all IDS B-level courses.

This experiential learning course allows students to experience first hand the realities, challenges, and opportunities of working with development organizations in Africa. The goal is to allow students to actively engage in research, decision-making, problem solving, partnership building, and fundraising, processes that are the key elements of development work.
Same as AFSA03H3

Introduces students to major development problems, focusing on international economic and political economy factors. Examines trade, aid, international institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO. Examines both conventional economic perspectives as well as critiques of these perspectives. This course can be counted for credit in ECM Programs.

The environmental consequences of development activities with emphasis on tropical countries. Environmental change in urban, rainforest, semi-arid, wetland, and mountainous systems. The influences of development on the global environment; species extinction, loss of productive land, reduced access to resources, declining water quality and quantity, and climate change.

This course offers an introduction to the political, institutional, social, economic, epidemiological, and ideological forces in the field of international/global health. While considerable reference will be made to “high-income” countries, major emphasis will be placed on the health conditions of “low- and middle-income” countries – and their interaction with the development “aid” milieu. After setting the historical and political economy context, the course explores key topics and themes in global health including: international/global health agencies and activities; data on health; epidemiology and the global distribution of health and disease; the societal determinants of health and health equity; health economics and the organization of health care systems in comparative perspective; globalization, trade, work, and health; health humanitarianism in the context of crisis, health and the environment; the ingredients of healthy societies across the world; and social justice approaches to global health.

What constitutes equitable, ethical as well as socially and environmentally just processes and outcomes of development? This course explores these questions with particular emphasis on their philosophical and ideological foundations and on the challenges of negotiating global differences in cultural, political and environmental values in international development.

This course offers students an in-depth survey of the role race and racism plays in Development of Thought and Practice across the globe. Students will learn the multiple ways colonial imaginaries and classificatory schemes continue to shape International Development and Development Studies. A variety of conceptual frameworks for examining race, racism and racialization will also be introduced.

Examines in-depth the roles of information and communication technology (ICT) in knowledge production and their impact on development. Do new forms of social media make communication more effective, equitable, or productive in the globalized world? How has network media changed governance, advocacy, and information flow and knowledge exchange and what do these mean for development?

This course will focus on the importance of historical, socio-economic, and political context in understanding the varying development experiences of different parts of the Global South. In addition to an introductory and concluding lecture, the course will be organized around two-week modules unpacking the development experience in four different regions of the Global South – Latin America/Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, and South/South East Asia.

Examines research design and methods appropriate to development fieldwork. Provides `hands on' advice (practical, personal and ethical) to those preparing to enter "the field"; or pursuing development work as a career. Students will prepare a research proposal as their main course assignment.

The role science plays in informing environmental policy is sometimes unclear. Students in this interdisciplinary class will examine key elements associated with generating scientific environmental knowledge, and learn how this understanding can be used to inform and critique environmental policy. Discussions of contemporary domestic and international examples are used to highlight concepts and applications.