Spanish for Public Health Purposes
Public Health 613
This course has been specifically designed to meet the needs of students in the health professions. It is one of the first university courses anywhere in the country to interweave culture, language instruction, and health care material. As such, students perform a variety of exercises and activities designed to strengthen each of these areas. Weekly virtual sessions will put into practice the material studied ahead of coming to class.
Health care professionals face a three-fold difficulty in communicating with non-English speaking patients and clients. Perhaps the most obvious is the language barrier. Successful communication with any patient, however, requires much more than being able to converse in a shared language. Cultural differences also could significantly impact communication. This course will help students develop strategies to recognize these differences and use them to improve patients’ and clients’ care. Finally, all health care workers face the difficulties inherent in communicating with people who are frightened, sick, and under stress.
Interprofessional, experiential learning
Students in PUBH. 613 include first and second year medical students, Masters in Public Health students, and undergraduate and graduate nursing students. All course activities are designed to leverage the interprofessional network of perspectives in the classroom to support the development of empathetic communication skills in addition to basic linguistic competencies.
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Once during the semester, pairs of students investigate either a disease or another topic related to the health professions, preferably, but not necessarily, related to the situation of Hispanics in Latin America or the USA. They are asked to present the basics of the disease or issue in question to the class in 5 – 6 minutes, while highlighting relevant vocabulary, controversies, or other relevant issues in an engaging way.
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Ahead of synchronous class sessions students respond to open class forums related to a challenge or inequity in the healthcare system. These challenges ask students to consider health policy and advocacy, social determinants of health, and cultural understandings of health and illness among other topics.
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One of the primary goals of PUBH 613 is for students to be able to synthesize the vocabulary and grammatical structures studied in the course into meaningful spoken language. The more students read in their individual field of interest, the more they will acquire the particular vocabulary needed to serve their patients and clients.
Four times during the semester students may choose an article from their field or from another field of interest related to health. Their summaries must contain the following: 1) an article citation; 2) a summary of the article in the student's own words; and 3) a list of five words or expressions (and their English translations) that the student learned from reading the article.
Student “Hot Topics” Fall 2023
