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Community Change in Public Health

Foundations of Global Health,

In bringing about behavior change in public health, we often focus on the individual mother, student, or farmer. We should not forget the community structure and norms constrain for encouraging individual health behaviors. This course examines the community context of the changes needed to promote the public’s health. We begin by examining the various definitions of ‘community’ and the processes by which we ‘diagnose’ or seek to understand the structure and characteristics of different types of communities. An appreciation of community similarities and differences is necessary lest we fall into the trap of designing one-size-fits-all interventions. We need to recognize that no matter that outsiders may view a community as poor or neglected, we can find strengths and capacities for improvement in each community. Identifying community capacities and resources is the first step in facilitating community change. Different practical and philosophical approaches to change and therefore, examined. Specific to the change process is our recognition of the need for communities to participate in the design, implementation and evaluation of any intervention. We examine the concept of participation in an effort to see how different levels of involvement may affect sustainability of community change efforts. Finally a case study of a community participatory approach to onchocerciasis control in Africa is presented. Community Directed Intervention has subsequently been successfully applied to providing other essential primary health care services by and in the community, such as insecticide treated bednets, malaria treatment, vitamin A distribution, deworming medicines, and pneumonia and diarrhea case management.

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Rating 4.4★ based on 39 ratings
Length 6 weeks
Effort 5 weeks of study, 1-3 hours/week
Starts Jul 3 (46 weeks ago)
Cost $49
From Johns Hopkins University via Coursera
Instructor William Brieger, DrPH
Download Videos On all desktop and mobile devices
Language English
Subjects Social Sciences Science
Tags Social Sciences Life Sciences Medicine And Healthcare Governance And Society Public Health

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What people are saying

public health

Lessons can be integrated beyond public health It was Amazing!

This is MUST take course for any public health professional no matter your leadership position Great course worth recommending to others.

The material is quite approachable for a range of students who may have little or extensive experience with public health/community change models of healthcare.

the course was informative to me Very useful course for those who work in the field and want to better structure their public health activities.

A very good course if one is interested to practise public health in the future ;-) This course is ideal for anyone interested in community-oriented public health.

The central question of "Community Change in Public Health" as taught by Prof. Dr. William R. Brieger of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on Coursera.org is this: How can meaningful and lasting changes in the health behavior of individuals and entire communities be achieved by outside intervention?

For all public health related practices, is better to have the knowledge from this course.

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highly recommend it

I highly recommend it.

I have had the opportunity to participate in this course twice - once as a student and once as a Coursera TA - and can only highly recommend it to anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of why some community health interventions fail while others produce salient results.

community change

If you want to learn about how to create community change, skip it.The course focuses on defining communities and types of change, which it does very well.

case studies

Neither myself nor anyone I peer-graded agreed with the course creators on which labels to use for the case studies, so I wonder how useful they are as learning points.Finally, I was disappointed that the course focuses on a handful of stereotypical communities and change programs (e.g.

The case studies were practical and showed the change that occurs in reality, not just theory An excellent learning program..a great opportunity to gain knowledge..

It is a very broad class and although the case studies being discussed is a bit out of my league, the concepts and theories are clear enough for me to apply to the community I have worked with.

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case study

Plan for more time than what is written if you really want to benefit from the case study homeworks, especially if you're a non-native (even good level) English speaker, but this should not stop you from taking the course: the topic is very well addressed and the examples tremendously relevant, not to say inspiring J!

I would like more small assignments to solidify defining terms and ideas before applying the course ideas to case study samples.

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well as

Great Course with in-depth lectures The course is extremely comprehensive in regards to coverage of the subject matter and the professor employs a certain mixture of academic as well as practical knowledge, which is second to none.

Many thanks to the team who put the course together and the lecturers too The theories were well delivered along with example cases and the best part is the assignment and peer review which can help the course the taker to learn much more ideas from peer as well as getting feedback from them.

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Careers

An overview of related careers and their average salaries in the US. Bars indicate income percentile.

Document Change Control $53k

Change Control Specialist 1 $71k

Community $73k

Change Control $82k

Engineering Change Coordinator 1 2 3 $85k

IT Specialist - IT Change Management $100k

IT Change Management Analyst $100k

Change Management Coordinator 1 $103k

Change Specialist 2 $112k

Change Management / Training $119k

Change Configuration Management $120k

Change Management Coordinator 3 $121k

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Rating 4.4★ based on 39 ratings
Length 6 weeks
Effort 5 weeks of study, 1-3 hours/week
Starts Jul 3 (46 weeks ago)
Cost $49
From Johns Hopkins University via Coursera
Instructor William Brieger, DrPH
Download Videos On all desktop and mobile devices
Language English
Subjects Social Sciences Science
Tags Social Sciences Life Sciences Medicine And Healthcare Governance And Society Public Health

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