Harvard University Extension School and the faculty for the course “Case Studies in Global Health: Biosocial Perspectives” (SSCI-E125) have decided to provide the videos and podcasts recordings of all the lectures to the public via the Global Health Delivery Project in the hopes of extending the reach of the course to anyone interested in global health throughout the world.

“Case Studies in Global Health: Biosocial Perspectives” is an interdisciplinary course designed to introduce students to the field of global health by framing a collection of problems and actions in global health — such as mental health, polio vaccination, or policy and advocacy — in a biosocial perspective. The teaching team, made up of four practitioner/anthropologists, draws on experiences working across the globe as well as an interdisciplinary body of literature to investigate what the field of global health may include, how global health problems are defined and constructed, and how global health interventions play out in expected and unexpected ways.

This course was taught during the fall semester of 2011 by Arthur M. Kleinman (Anthropology; Harvard Medical School), Paul E. Farmer (University Professor; Harvard Medical School; Harvard School of Public Health), Anne Becker (Harvard Medical School), and Salmaan Keshavjee (Harvard Medical School), with a number of guest speakers.

The Course Syllabus is available here. Lectures are divided in two parts with mp4 16×9 videos and podcasts recordings and organized in themes.

Global Health: Historical Perspective, Cases, Media

• Four Social Theories – Biosocial Interactions; Unintended Consequences; Social Construction of Reality; and the Weberian Vision of Modernity - Paul Farmer, Arthur Kleinman

• Three More Social Theories – Social Suffering, Biopower, and Local Moral Experience – Arthur Kleinman, Paul Farmer

• An Ethnography of Global Health Organizations in Haiti – Erica James, Paul Farmer

• Colonial Medicine and Its Legacies in Global Health – Jeremy Greene

• The Role of Biomedicine in Global Health – Jeremy Greene

• Point IV to the Rise of the World Bank: Discourses of Development and Global Health – Emily Harrisson

• Neoliberalism as Development Theology - Salmaan Keshavjee

• Polio Vaccination in Uttar Pradesh – Joe Rhatigan

• From Ethnography to Action in Haiti: Why Ethnography Matters – Ophelia Dahl

• Humanitarianism and an Anthropological Perspective – Jennifer Leaning, Paul Farmer

• Media and Global Health - Kalpana Jain, Sam Loewenberg (Richard Knox)

Malaria

• Common Sense, Community Health Workers, and Malaria Control in Northern Uganda - Video Part 1; Video Part 2 and Podcasts

Non-Communicable Diseases

• Global Mental Health: Finding and Closing the Resource Gaps - Video  Part 1; Video Part 2 and Podcasts
• Eating Pathology, Suicide Risk and Rapid Social Change in Fiji: Low Visibility and High Vulnerability - Video Part 1; Video Part 2 and Podcasts
• Transnational Capitalism: The Case of Global Tobacco - Video Part 1; Video Part 2 and Podcasts
• Stigma and Mental Health: Video Part 1; Video Part 2 and Podcasts

Strengthening Health Systems

• Non-Governmental Organizations and the Delivery of Health Care - Video Part 1; Video Part 2; Podcast
• Delivery Struggles in Rwanda - Video; Video Part 2; Podcast
• Strengthening Health Systems: The Case of Mexico and Its Global Implications: Video Part 1; Video Part 2; Podcast
• Policy and Advocacy - Video Part 1; Video Part 2

Tuberculosis

• Exploring the Biosocial: MDR-TB as a Paradigm for Global Health – Video Part 1; Video Part 2 and Podcast
• Overcoming Structural Violence: MDR-TB care in Russia – Video Part 1; Video Part 2 and Podcasts
• BRAC’s TB Program: Pioneering DOT Treatment for TB in Rural Bangladesh - Video Part 1; Video Part 2 and Podcasts;  Read the GHD Case Study by signing up to the Harvard Business Publishing website for free!