NURS 7405: Epidemiology: Optimizing Population Health

This course provides the student with a review of the basic concepts, principles and methods of epidemiology applied to population focused health care and nursing practice for evaluation and implementation of evidence-based decision-making in health care to investigate inequities, enhance quality, control cost, and predict and analyze outcomes. Emphasis is placed on the use of epidemiologic reasoning in deriving inferences about the multi-factorial etiology of health phenomena from population data and in guiding the design of responsive health service programs. Attention to demographic, cultural and social dimensions of health problems and programs will focus on the ethical use of epidemiological reasoning. Through this course the student will be able to critically read and evaluate epidemiological data, extract implications of these data, and apply their knowledge to decision-making using epidemiological principles. Additionally, this course is designed to widen the lens students use to understand population health, expanding boundaries to capture global health issues, creating context for national, regional, state, city and local community perspectives as potential healing environments. Study of specific international organizations and NGOs such as WHO and UNICEF, with a focus on creating healing environments will be complemented by the roles played globally by nurses through organizations such as ICN and STTI. Nationally, comparable analyses will include the PPACA, CDC, EPA, etc. and the ANA, AACN, AONE and the NLN. State and local expressions of these resources will be identified and explored for intent, impact, and potential partnerships. Guided by the Catholic intellectual tradition and Catholic social teaching, the role of the transformational nurse leader as an actor in these formal structures will be explored, along with the effective use of resources such as epidemiological studies; global, national, state and local data bases; models of and opportunities for inter-professional collaboration; emergent technologies and policy crafting opportunities; and innovative approaches to unanticipated challenges.