GEOG 380
Geographical
Patterns of Health
Dr. Jonathan Mayer
Tuesday and Thursday, 4:30-6:30 pm
Electrical Engineering (EE) 125
Sections: as listed on your registration schedule. They meet on Thursday, before or after the main class.
Professor:
Dr. Jonathan D. Mayer,
Departments of Epidemiology, Geography, Internal Medicine (Infectious Diseases), Global Health, Health Services, and Family Medicine; Co-director, Undergraduate Program in Public Health
Tel: (206) 543-7110, Health Sci F-259 and Smith 412-C
Email: jmayer@u.washington.edu
Office hours by appointment: mayer.appts@yahoo.com
TA’s
Chunhui Wang
PhD candidate in Epidemiology
David Moore
Graduate student in Geography
Dsm13@u.washington.edu
Listproc for course: geog380a_sp09@u.washington.edu (please remember, for your own privacy, that anything posted to the listproc will go to everybody in the class. This has proven to be an embarrassment to some people in the past, so be cautious!)
A word on academic honesty and integrity is in
order. We will adhere strictly to the rules of the University of Washington and
the academic community in prohibiting plagiarism, cheating, and academic
dishonesty. These provisions are spelled out in detail at the following
website, with which all students are expected to be familiar. Each year in this
class, several cases of cheating and plagiarism, unfortunately, are discovered.
To prevent this, you must read the contents of the following website:
http://depts.washington.edu/grading/issue1/honesty.htm
We assume that each
and every student is familiar with the contents of this web page. No excuses
will be accepted for academic dishonesty.
By submitting a
piece of written work for the course, we assume that you have read the webpage
above, are familiar with the University’s policies on academic honesty, and
agree to abide by them. Thus, no excuses for plagiarism or cheating will be
accepted.
REQUIREMENTS:
Books:
Everybody is expected to subscribe to ProMED (Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases) at www.promedmail.org, “subscribe” on the upper left.
The following books are required for the course.
Robert S. Desowitz, New Guinea
Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers: Tales of Parasites and Peoples. New
York; W. W. Norton, 1987.
Robert S. Desowitz, Federal Bodysnatchers and the New Guinea Virus: People, Parasites, Politics. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002.
Madeleine Drexler, Secret
Agents: The Menace of Emerging Infections. New York: Penguin Books, 2002,
2003 (afterword).
Susan Hunter, Black
Death: AIDS in Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Helen Epstein, The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and
the Fight Against AIDS. New
York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2007.
David L. Heymann, ed. Control
of Communicable Disease Manual, 19th edition. Washington:
American Public Health Association Press, 2008. This book is optional but is a
very valuable reference.
Grading:
Take home midterm-
25%
Take home final-
25%
Response paper 1-
15%
Response paper 2-
15%
Participation- 20%
Details will be discussed in your first quiz sections.
There are NO makeup exams, NO makeup assignments, and NO extra credit. All inquires about your grades must be submitted in writing.
Course rationale:
Health and disease are not only medical issues, but they are
also social and geographical phenomena. People and groups must always live in
the contexts and constraints of the world that is extraneous to them. Disease
is also a major world problem. Both infectious and non-infectious diseases have
social causes, in part, and also influence societies.
This course sets disease and health within the framework of human-environment
interaction.
Course goals and
objectives:
The major goal of this course is to introduce students to geographical approaches to health and disease, particularly within the setting of human-environment interactions. We will cover many specific diseases, but in addition to their inherent interest, each is prototypical of one or more aspects of environmental equilibrium and disequilibrium.
My educational
beliefs:
Students are inherently curious and seek to understand the
world surrounding them and the world in which they live. These courses, and my
teaching, are both aimed at encouraging the critical analysis of the human-health-environment
relationships. This understanding and analysis must come from a solid knowledge
of the factual, scientific, and conceptual bases from which such understanding
and thinking must come. Some students will find that this course will contribute
directly to their professional development, while others will find that it
provides a basis for understanding issues of health and disease as citizens in
a democratic society, in which we can all help to determine the course of
society. My own role in this course will be multifaceted. Sometimes I will
serve as an authority on the subjects that we will cover. At other times, I
will be a facilitator of inquiry and debate. I hope that I will always be a
resource for your own interests and investigations as we proceed through the
course.
Introduction
Week 1 (Week of of March 30)
Global Health Problems: An overview.
Film:
Rx for Survival.
Week 2 (Week of April 6)
Disease ecology
Fundamental
concepts
Malaria
West Nile Virus and West Nile Encephalitis
Reading: Reading: New Guinea Tapeworms, ch. 1-6
Federal Bodysnatchers,
Introduction and ch 1-6
Week 3 (Week of April 13) and part of Week 4
Paper #1 due on April 17th.
Helminths
(“worms”)
Trypanosomiasis and Onchocerciasis
Schistosomiasis
Tick-Borne
Diseases (including Lyme disease)
Cryptosporidiosis
Cholera
New Guinea Tapeworm: Ch. 7, 8, 12
Federal Bodysnatchers: Ch. 7 -10
Why do Diseases Emerge?
West Nile
SARS
Dengue
Reading:
Secret Agents: Ch. 1, 2
Weeks 5-6 (Weeks of April 27 and May 4)
Take-home midterm due on May 1st.
Foodborne Diseases
Influenza Pandemics
Antimicrobial resistance—MRSA
Reading: Secret Agents ch. 3-8.
HIV/AIDS: Global Perspectives
Week 7 (Week of May 11)
Global Patterns of HIV
HIV
in USA
HIV
in Africa: Introduction
Reading: Black Death, ch. 1-5.
Invisible Cure, ch. 1-3.
Week 8
HIV in Africa (Week of May 18)
Paper# 2 due on May 21st.
HIV and other STIs:
Co-Infection
Tuberculosis
Evolution
of the Epidemic and Its African Origin
Reading: Black
Death, ch. 6-8.
Invisible Cure, ch. 5-8.
Weeks 9-10 (Weeks of
May 18, May 25)
HIV
and TB
Microbicides, vaccines, medications
Policy
Responses
Successes
and Failures
Reading: Invisible Cure, ch.
9-end
Week 10 (June 1-)
Urbanization
and Urban Slum Health
Reading
will be announced
Take-home final due on Tuesday of final exam week, June 9.
Some useful links:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC)
Morbidity and
Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). An essential short digest of vital health information and outbreak
investigations in the US.
Emerging Infectious Diseases. A top-notch publication by CDC. You may subscribe to either
the online or hard copy editions for free.
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
National Center for Health
Statistics
Global Fund to Stop AIDS,
Tuberculosis, and Malaria
UW electronic
journal collection
PubMed (Interface with National Library of Medicine—all
major public health, medical, and relevant geography articles are included here