GHCS300R: Health in Humanitarian Emergencies

Course description

This course covers the technical and management principles that undergird planning, implementing, and evaluating health programs for displaced populations in developing countries. Initially a graduate-level course, this course introduces undergraduate students to public health and trains graduate students in teaching.

Faculty CV

Dabney Evans is an assistant research professor in the Hubert Department of Global Health at Rollins School of Public Health and faculty lead in the Center for Humanitarian Emergencies. She received a doctoral degree in law in 2010 from the University of Aberdeen in Aberdeen, Scotland, a master of public health degree from Rollins in 1998, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology at Arizona State University in 1996. Graduate coinstructors are Katie Hatfield 15MPH, Evelyn Howatt 15MPH, Samantha Perkins 15MPH, Meaghan Novi 15MPH, Kelcie Landon 15MPH, and Michelle Leisner 15MPH.

Today’s class

A Walking Dead–style risk exercise that challenges students to take on the role of civic leaders and health officials responding to a new outbreak of a “zombie virus” that wiped out 85 percent of the world’s population a hundred years earlier. In this scenario, it is about seventy-five years since the last case of the infection was recorded—a period marked by paranoia over the perceived threat of the virus reemerging. When a possible new outbreak occurs, students have to decide what information civic and public health leaders should release and discuss key threats to effective risk communication.

Quotes to Note

“In emergency situations, people want to focus on surface things, but you have to look deeper. If you start focusing on the surface things you won’t get down to the root causes of an emergency, and many of the most successful interventions are the ones that empower people in the communities to get at those root causes.”

—Meaghan Novi 15MPH, coinstructor

Students Say

“Public health is where the policies need to change and where we can make the greatest changes.”

—Alice Kim 15C

“Having six mentors in the graduate coinstructors, plus the professor, has been helpful for us in answering questions and getting advice about career opportunities. It has opened doors for us to get connected to Rollins and the CDC and learn from people who’ve been there.”

—Andrew Mitchell 16C