Note that not all courses will be offered in all semesters. Check on Albert or with the NYU school for information on when a listed course is offered.
Emergency Preparedness for Healthcare Organizations
Summer | GPH-GU 5150
Prerequisites: none
The healthcare system is uniquely challenged by large-scale disasters, which are on the increase in the United States and throughout the world. Every setting of healthcare, from hospitals to outpatient clinics may be affected by acute emergencies and disaster events. Therefore, as public health professionals, healthcare professionals, emergency managers, or other professionals in charge of ensuring a safe patient care environment, it is essential to become familiar with the current disaster management paradigm (mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery) as it pertains to the healthcare environment. This course is designed to provide students with disaster management capabilities that will have applicability in their current or future employment.
Global Health Disaster Preparedness and Response
Fall or Spring | GPH-GU 5210
Prerequisites: GPH-GU 2016 or 5106
Large-scale disasters and catastrophes, also referred to as mega-disasters or hyper-complex emergencies, are of such magnitude that they affect an entire country-either directly or indirectly and require national or international response capabilities to recover. Incidents or events such as pandemics and climate change that impact more than one country or region are also considered global disasters. In this course, students will define and characterize major catastrophic threats, assess data for mitigation purposes, conduct risk assessments for public health impact and structural and non-structural damages, identify recovery strategies and assess role of memorialization on community recovery. Students will prepare an Emergency Operations Plan and appropriate plan annexes.
Management of Public Health Disasters
Spring | GPH-GU 5270
Prerequisites: none
This course introduces basic principles and practices of public health disaster management. Students explore threat and hazard identification, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery, and will apply their new skills and knowledge to address a wide range of natural and man-made disaster events of concern to public health. The course includes legal/ethical considerations, psychological impacts of disasters, community resiliency, planning for the needs of vulnerable populations, and other topics relevant to disaster management. For the culminating project for this course, students develop a disaster plan for their local department of health or for their workplace. Students also complete (no-cost) on-line FEMA ICS certification training as part of this course.
Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response: A Global Perspective
January | GPH-GU 9345 (equivalent to GPH-GU 2345)
Prerequisites: GPH-GU 2106 or 5106 and GPH-GU 2140 or 5140
This course will contrast US and international approaches to public health emergency preparedness and response. Rotating among different sites within the NYU Global Network University, the course will focus on the aspects of global public health emergency response systems germane to the host country. The emergency preparedness course in Israel will focus on the planning and deployment of international humanitarian aid missions, preparedness and response to terrorism, public health ethical issues that arise in conflict situations, and disaster mental health and community resilience. The course will also review principles of surveillance, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery from natural and man-made emergency events, and cover both US and international emergency management and public health frameworks.
Complex Systems, Disasters and the Social Ecology of Health
Alexis Merdjanoff and David Abrams | GPH-GU 3260
Explores systems that contribute to a social ecology of health, considering the theoretical and methodological approaches for studying complex adapative systems. A major aspect is employing disaster case studies as a means of understanding such systems.
Issues in Humanitarian Assistance and Intervention
Jens Rudbeck | GLOB1-GC 2330
Humanitarians rush to help starving children, fleeing refugees and others in crisis, but too often what seems like a straightforward solution becomes a dilemma. Aid agencies may be forced to assist combatants in order to gain access to their victims. Food donations may destroy the local economy, making aid a permanent necessity. Warring factions may deliberately cause suffering in order to attract aid, which they then loot. Governments may use humanitarian relief as an excuse not to intervene militarily. This course explores how non-governmental organizations and international agencies wrestle with the complex issues that arise in emergency situations.
Responding to Emergencies in the Global System
Christopher Ankerson | GLOB1-GC 3064
Part of Global Risk specialization in MS Global Affairs. Whether it is an extreme weather event, an outbreak of a pandemic disease, an outpouring of migrants, a civil war that threatens to spill over borders, or a genocide, there are times when critical events require the concerted efforts of a range of actors across the global system. Nevertheless, there exists an array of options and possibilities that might occur, ranging from inactivity to comprehensive responses. In some cases, single countries take the lead in responding, in other cases regional neighbors muddle through, and in some it appears that the entire planet is unified in pulling together to address the crisis. Sometimes our responses are adequate, but sadly there are also times when they are not. How that success is measured and how those failures are learned from are not settled matters. With climate change and conflict showing no signs of abating, how the world responds to emergencies is of utmost importance to us all.
A Practical Guide To Resilience: Designing Adaptive Systems For Basic Needs
Benedetta Piantella and Elizabeth Henaff | DM-GY 9103 K
We rely on innumerous centralized systems for most of our basic needs including power, communication, healthcare and food. In times of crisis these centralized systems become major points of failure and their infrastructure is slow to adapt and change. In this course we will explore open challenges and flexible responses to real-world disruptions such as when the NYC power grid goes down, when street level flooding impedes transport or when a virus outbreak occurs. This course is a choose-your-own-adventure citizen science & design research class that aims to leverage resource constraints as design opportunities. The course is organized around four modules based on real-world scenarios which will introduce tools, methods and practical skills around fermentation, wireless networking, energy production and harvesting, citizen science and environmental sensing. The modules include expert lectures, collaborations with local Community-Based Organizations (CBOs), hands-on workshops and field trips. Students will work in groups and individually to respond to design briefs within a specific context and its constraints through a series of short assignments. The class aims to empower students to contribute to the resiliency of their communities in the face of change and uncertainty.
Interdisciplinary Seminar: The Social Challenges of Climate Change
Eric Klinenberg | SOC-GA 3000 -002
Planning for Emergencies and Disasters
Vanessa Leon | URLP-GP 2445
The consequences of disastrous events are escalating across the world, for example, in terms of lives lost, injuries, adverse social conditions, economic costs, and environmental destruction. Furthermore, the rapidity of action required when an emergency arises poses unique challenges to traditional planning and the provision of public services. This course provides students with the capacity to develop planning and public service approaches to understanding, diagnosing and addressing causes, consequences, mitigation and adaptation measures particularly for natural disasters using U.S.-based and global disaster and recovery instances as sites for analyses. The course also includes knowledge of social and individual behaviors that serve as a foundation for understanding how people act in disasters, how behavioral changes may save lives and property, and how risks are or should be communicated at every stage.
Disaster, Trauma and Loss
Madelyn Miller | MSWEL-GS3007
January Term
This course will introduce a cohesive perspective from which to consider immediate, emerging, and long-term community engagement and clinical practice in the aftermath of disaster. Considering collective and individual impact, as well as resourcefulness, as disasters evolve, discussion will include dimensions of distress, trauma, loss, and traumatic loss, within a cultural frame. Providing a global and historical context, the class will consider a variety of disasters, and the social realities of inequity and violation often accompanying them. Cumulative police shootings/choking within a context of race, no indictments, collective grief, and community protest; the Sydney, Australia hostage situation accompanied by #illridewithyou hashtag in solidarity; the recent Philippine typhoon, so soon after last year’s typhoon devastation as many still mourn and recover; the epidemic of Ebola in West Africa, as here in the city diaspora families mourn for loved ones and experience others’ animosity and suspicion, and as health workers plead for respect, and the city community grapples with fear; unaccompanied children from Central America fleeing violence and violation; the context of humanitarian catastrophe across the Middle East; the continuing impact of the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting, and the context of other school and community shootings; the unprecedented devastation of Superstorm Sandy, with long-extended regional and local impact, still; the East Harlem building explosion and collapse; and the Boston marathon bombing, are only some. In addition, the Japan earthquake/tsunami/nuclear power plant disaster, amid uncertainty and worry; the Haiti earthquake, with attendant health and infrastructure problems; the Gulf Coast region hurricanes of Katrina and Rita, amidst issues of race and class; the Indian Ocean region tsunami in the context of civil war; and the aftermath of September 11, 2001, framed by a context of bias, also offer context and will be viewed within a long-term perspective. The course will identify the diversity of social work roles and practice with individuals, groups, and communities having distinctly unique situations, and will look at the significant roles of community, support networks, and cultural foundations. The inevitable impact on clinicians of providing community engagement and clinical practice across the long-term continuum of unfolding disaster, along with their own resourcefulness and resilience, will be addressed, highlighting the importance of reflective self-care for student and social worker, on-going support, continued learning, and active social engagement.
Trauma: Theoretical and Clinical Perspectives
APSY-GE 2500
Study of the human response to trauma with emphasis on the biologic, psychodynamic & social consequences. Child sexual abuse, terrorism, rape, war & disasters are some examples of the traumas considered. Consideration of theories, dilemmas, & clinical perspectives. Specific attention to legal issue, reporting, identification, assessment, techniques for interviewing & evidence gathering, non-traumatic & traumatic memory, issues & techniques in treatment, & prevention.
Clinical Case Seminar in Trauma Studies: Transdisciplinary Reappraisals of Clinical Work
Judith Alpert | APSY-GE 2505
The work of mental health clinicians will be the focus of study. The complexity of the clinician’s trauma work will be considered through clinical presentation by clinicians, readings, & discussions. Topics include: the meaning & experience of trauma, interventions in clinical trauma work (such as child abuse, sexual abuse, rape, human trafficking, battering, racism, & war & its aftermath, terrorism & political action); & working with natural disasters. There will be academic autopsies of case material.
Crisis Management & Business Continuity
Anne Ferraro or John Ladyzinski | MASY1-GC 3615
This course focuses on the business decisions and management processes necessary to anticipate, plan for, manage, communicate about, and recover from crises affecting corporations and other complex organizations. It covers the key component steps for the development of a corporate Business Continuity Plan as a vital part of the day to day operations of enterprises. Additionally, the course examines the way companies in distress, and the constituencies who matter to those companies, predictably behave during crises. Students learn that crisis management is an ongoing process and learn to establish enterprise crisis training. They also create emergency preparedness and response plans such as mitigating hazards, executing crisis communication strategies, and managing business recovery and continuity.
Graduate Projects in Visual Arts Administration: Art During Crisis
Roselee Goldberg and Sandra Lang | ARVA-GE 2927
This course reviews artists’ responses during times of crisis. Whether floods, war, racial, ethnic and gender violence or pandemics of catastrophic dimensions, artists respond in thoughtful and powerful ways, creating work that emblematizes the horrors, and provides places of mourning, memory and healing. This course overviews contemporary art of the past several decades, showing critical turning points when such crises resulted in major cultural change. The ideas and aesthetics of the artists’ work selected for study show persistent social conscience and humanism.