EXCITING NEWS!!! NEW PUBLIC HEALTH COURSE BEING OFFERED FOR UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS. THIS SHOULD BE AN EXCELLENT COURSE FOR ANYONE CONSIDERING CAREERS IN MEDICINE OR PUBLIC HEALTH. The first undergraduate public health course at Columbia, a collaboration with the Mailman School of Public Health . . . W3950- Social History of American Public Health (call #49783) Monday & Wednesday 4:10 PM- 5:25 PM Location: 503 Hamilton Hall Instructor: David K. Rosner, PhD Ronald H. Lauterstein Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and Professor of History COURSE DESCRIPTION The purpose of this course is to provide students with a historical understanding of the role public health has played in American history. The underlying assumptions are that disease, and the ways we define disease, are simultaneously reflections of social and cultural values, as well as important factors in shaping those values. Also, it is maintained that the environments that we build determine the ways we live and die. The dread infectious and acute diseases in the nineteenth century, the chronic, degenerative conditions of the twentieth and the new, vaguely understood conditions rooted in a changing chemical and human-made environment are emblematic of the societies we created. The syllabus has been constructed to focus on a few particular themes and issues. The first part of the course will focus on the changing demographics of Colonial and Early Republic America and the creation of the social and biological conditions necessary for the arrival of the nineteenth century epidemics of cholera, typhoid, yellow fever among others.