Public Health and You

Public health seems to be everywhere in the news these days, but what exactly is it? Where can you even find public health? This lesson will help answer these questions and more about public health and its contribution to society. Spoiler: It is estimated public health is responsible for 25-30 years of increased life expectancy.

Health is so much more than going to the doctor’s office. There are other factors that affect your health. How do these factors influence your current health and your future health? In Part 1 we’ll cover the biological and environmental determinants of health, with a brief intro of the social determinants of health.

Now that we have explored how our biology and environment affect our health, it is time to explore other factors. The social determinants of health: your behavior, your neighborhood, your experiences in life all influence your current and future health. In this lesson, we will turn our focus to some of the social determinants of health.

Research is foundational to public health. So, what goes into public health research? How do scientists or experts who study public health figure out what affects your health? This lesson will introduce you to the methods that public health scientists use to study the world around us.

A lot of information is passed around through social media, podcasts, the news, and other online sources. This lesson will teach you some methods to help sort fact from fiction. We will also review how media bias leads to misinformation and some of the good sides of social media.

We are all worried about getting sick. Yet, how does our body fight off diseases and build immunity? How do doctors diagnose a disease? This lesson reviews how infections happen and how our immune system works. We also review why it's important to test for infections and ways we can support our immune system.

Have you ever wondered what’s actually in a vaccine? Why is there such a fuss over them? Are the misconceptions actually true? We’re here to help - in this lesson, we’ll learn about the importance of vaccines, some reasons for hesitancy and facts to counter vaccine misinformation.

We get new information about the COVID-19 pandemic every day. And it seems everyone is an epidemiology expert. But what exactly is a pandemic? How do diseases spread across a country or the world? What is r0?! In this lesson, we will cover these questions and more.

Creating and changing policy is one of the most impactful ways to improve health across local communities, states, and the nation. Yet, changing policy is a long process. So how can we change policy and why should we care? In this lesson, we’ll review how policies impact our health, and who helps to form policy.

So 9 lessons in, let’s apply what we learned! The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all of us in different ways. The world locked down, and we all had to navigate major uncertainty. In the final lesson of the course, we’ll review the history of the COVID-19 pandemic, how it spread, and what is being done to fight it.