CHL5020H: Public Health Impact, Trust and Communications

To "do" public health well, we must generate public impact. But the field of public health now faces a historic crisis of mistrust that stymies our ability to generate impact across many of our fields — from epidemiology and addictions to occupational health and policy.

In this course, students will study the dynamics currently undermining public trust in public health and then be introduced to evidence-based models they can apply to generate impact in low trust environments across public health fields. These include: community engagement models, journalism models, political problem-solving models, and crisis management models.

This course is interactive and highly applied; it is designed for graduate students in all fields of public health and health policy, across DLSPH programs, and for those preparing to work in either internal or public-facing roles:

  • Each session will include in-class exercises and discussions of students' contributions to prompts in the Quercus discussion forum.

  • In three sessions, guests who have shaped Canadian journalism, politics, and public health campaigns will review students' applications of the models they are learning.

  • The final session will be an intensive crisis-simulation.

0.50
Course is eligible to be completed as Credit/No Credit: Yes
St. George