Global Health Minor
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, College of Human Ecology
Program Description
Cornell’s Division of Nutritional Sciences offers a minor in global health. This program is intended to complement any academic major at the University and provide students with basic knowledge about global health, as well as the necessary skills and experience to build their own unique global health career. For more information, visit the Global Health Minor website.
Other anthropologically-relevant study abroad options, using existing Cornell Abroad and off-campus options, can be worked out in consultation with the major advisor and Cornell Abroad.
Minor Requirements
Experiential Learning Opportunity Requirement
A critical element of the Global Health Minor is an approved, eight-week experiential learning opportunity (ELO) during which students engage with a resource-limited population either in the United States or abroad. Students are challenged to apply their classroom learning to a field setting and deepen their understanding of the health problems that disproportionately affect underserved communities.
The learning outcomes of the ELO are as follows:
At the completion of this experiential learning opportunity, students will be able to:
- Identify a global or public health issue, through engagement in practice, policy, or research, which you intend to analyze in great depth in NS 4600.
- Examine and explain the key characteristics and interests of host organization, hospital, institution, or research project, and how they relate to specific global or public health issues of interest.
- Analyze a global or public health issue integrating academic knowledge and experiential learning.
- Document and explain how the applied experience advanced academic, professional, and personal learning goals.
Before completing an ELO, students must:
- Successfully complete NS 2600: Introduction to Global Health.
- Submit an ELO Petition Form for review by the DNS Petition Review Team.
After completing an ELO, students must:
- Successfully complete NS 4600.
Course Requirements
Code | Title | Hours |
---|---|---|
Required Courses 1 | ||
NS 2600 | Introduction to Global Health | 3 |
NS 4600 | Explorations in Global and Public Health | 3 |
- 1
both courses must be taken for a letter grade to fulfill the minor requirement.
Elective Course Requirement
Students must complete a total of 9 credits of elective courses. All elective courses used to fulfill the minor requirements must be taken for a letter grade. These three courses must be distributed across three out of the five following Elective Course categories:
Category I. Biomedical & Epidemiological Approaches to Global Health
Includes courses encompassing a ‘hard science” approach to the study of disease and epidemiology. Surveys both communicable and parasitic vectors commonly occurring in resource-poor as well as nutritional and environmental foundations of increasingly prevalent non-communicable disease.
Code | Title | Hours |
---|---|---|
BIOMI 2500 | Public Health Microbiology | 3 |
BIOMI 2600 | Microbiology of Human Contagious Diseases | 3 |
BIOMI 2950 | Biology of Infectious Disease: From Molecules to Ecosystems | 3 |
BIOMI 3210 | The Gut Microbiome | 3 |
BIOMI 4040 | Pathogenic Bacteriology | 2-3 |
BIOMI 4090 | Principles of Virology | 3 |
BIOMI 4310 | Medical Parasitology | 2 |
BIOMS 4150 | Essential Immunology | 3 |
BIOMS 4340 | Cellular and Molecular Microbial Pathogenesis: The Host Pathogen Interplay | 3 |
ENTOM 2100 | Plagues and People | 3 |
FDSC 4220 | Foods, Dietary Supplements, and Health | 2 |
NS 3030 | Nutrition, Health and Vegetarian Diets | 3 |
NS 3060 | Nutrition and Global Health | 3 |
NS 3150 | Obesity and the Regulation of Body Weight | 3 |
NS 3600 | Epidemiology | 3 |
NS 4200 | Diet and the Microbiome | 3 |
NS 4410 | Nutrition and Disease | 4 |
NS 6140 | Maternal and Child Nutrition and Health | 3 |
PLSCI 4070 | Nutritional Quality Improvement of Food Crops | 2 |
Category II. Social & Ethical Approaches to Global Health
Studies of cultural and social issues affecting the health of global populations including the interplay between a society’s dynamics and the disease and nutritional profile of its populations. Includes courses covering macro and micro community health as well as ethics and human rights which aids in forming a foundation upon which students can build effective policies and frameworks tailored to a population.
Code | Title | Hours |
---|---|---|
AMST 2225 | Controversies About Inequality | 4 |
AMST 2722 | ||
AMST 3141 | Prisons | 4 |
ANTHR 2245 | Health and Disease in the Ancient World | 3 |
ANTHR 2421 | Worlding Sex and Gender | 3 |
ANTHR 2468 | Medicine, Culture, and Society | 4 |
ANTHR 3465 | Anthropology of the Body | 3 |
ANTHR 4682 | Medicine and Healing in Africa | 3 |
ASIAN 2262 | Medicine and Healing in China | 4 |
ASRC 4602 | Women and Gender Issues in Africa | 3 |
BSOC 2051 | Ethical Issues in Health and Medicine | 4 |
BSOC 2061 | Ethics and the Environment | 4 |
BSOC 2071 | Introduction to the History of Medicine | 3 |
BSOC 2201 | Society and Natural Resources | 3 |
BSOC 3011 | Life Sciences and Society | 3 |
CRP 3011 | ||
GDEV 2010 | Population and Social Change | 3 |
GDEV 2200 | ||
GDEV 3111 | Social Studies of Medicine | 3 |
GDEV 3700 | Comparative Social Inequalities | 3 |
EDUC 2610 | Intergroup Dialogue | 3 |
HD 2510 | Social Gerontology: Aging and the Life Course | 3 |
NS 2450 | Social Science Perspectives on Food and Nutrition | 3 |
NS 4420 | Implementation of Nutrition Care | 3 |
NS 4500 | Public Health Nutrition | 3 |
PUBPOL 3180 | Health Disparities | 3 |
PUBPOL 3280 | Fundamentals of Population Health | 3 |
SOC 4120 | Health and Social Context | 3 |
Category III. Political, Economic & Food Systems Approaches to Global Health
Addresses local and global economic and political forces which influence the healthcare system of a region and its development. Educates students on subjects ranging from studies of agriculture and food system regulations to formulating balanced policy recommendations. This category focuses mainly on nutritional public policy from its basis in agro-economic theory to specific application to developing political systems.
Code | Title | Hours |
---|---|---|
AEM 1600 | The Business of Modern Medicine | 1.5 |
AEM 2000 | Contemporary Controversies in the Global Economy | 3 |
AEM 3385 | Social Entrepreneurship Practicum: Anabel's Grocery | 3 |
AEM 4450 | Toward a Sustainable Global Food System: Food Policy for Developing Countries | 3 |
COMM 2850 | Communication, Environment, Science, and Health | 3 |
ECON 3710 | The Economics of Risky Health Behaviors | 4 |
ECON 3910 | Health, Poverty, and Inequality: A Global Perspective | 3 |
ECON 6410 | Health Economics I | 3 |
ECON 6420 | Health Economics II | 3 |
ECON 7711 | Microeconomics of Development: Applications to Health, Nutrition and Education | 3 |
GDEV 3020 | Political Ecologies of Health | 3 |
GDEV 3400 | Agriculture, Food, Sustainability and Social Justice | 3 |
GDEV 4140 | Global Cropping Systems and Sustainable Development | 3 |
NS 4480 | Economics of Food and Malnutrition | 3 |
PUBPOL 2350 | The U.S. Health Care System | 3 |
PUBPOL 3870 | Economic Evaluations in Health Care | 3 |
PUBPOL 4110 | Pollution, Climate Change, and Health | 3 |
PUBPOL 4370 | The Economics of Health Care Markets | 3 |
Category IV. Health Systems & Programmatic Approaches to Global Health
Code | Title | Hours |
---|---|---|
AEM 4880 | Global Food, Energy, and Water Nexus – Engage the US, China, and India for Sustainable Future | 3-4 |
BEE 2510 | Engineering Processes for Environmental Sustainability | 3 |
BEE 3299 | Sustainable Development | 3 |
ENGRG 3400 | Engineering Student Project Teams | 1-3 |
DEA 2700 | Healthy Places: Design, Planning and Public Health | 3 |
DEA 5305 | Health and Healing Studio | 4 |
ILROB 4710 | Social Science Research Methods | 3 |
NS 4030 | Teaching Apprenticeship 1 | 1-5 |
PUBPOL 5449 | Systems Thinking Modeling | 3 |
PLSCI 2100 | Medical Ethnobotany | 3 |
PLSCI 3100 | Medicinal Botany and Drug Discovery | 2 |
- 1
only for NS 2600, 3610, 4600, 4620, 4630 or 4631
Category V. Area-Specific Studies (Petition-Only)
Students may petition to fulfill an elective requirement with a course that examines specific regions or populations relating to the location of their field experience or their career interests. Students are encouraged to study regional languages that they may use during their field experiences, but language courses cannot fulfill an elective requirement for the minor.
To petition for a course to count toward Category V, please submit an Elective Petition Form, found on the program website.
Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of the Global Health Minor, students are able to:
- Analyze global health problems, issues and controversies using multiple disciplinary perspectives and conceptual frameworks,
- Integrate knowledge from academic study and experiential learning toward being active and informed citizens in a global community,
- Demonstrate the capacity to critically reflect on one's own values, ethics, assumptions and actions in the context of cultures, collaborations and institutions,
- Demonstrate the capacity to collaborate across differences (e.g. cultural, social, personal, economic, values, religious).