Title

SOC2710 - Epidemics and Society

API ID

Credits

3 (3/0/0)

Description

This course meets MnTC Goal Areas 5 and 8.This course is intended to be a history of epidemics and their effects on western societies. It is a general education course for students interested in the history of epidemic diseases and concern for our preparedness as a society to meet new threats. The course begins with a brief history of medicine and the various interpretations of disease. It then focuses on plague pandemics and concludes with current epidemics and newly emerging and reemerging diseases. Epidemics and pandemics of focus include: Plague, Smallpox, Yellow Fever, Typhus, Cholera, Tuberculosis, Malaria, Polio, HIV/AIDS and hemorrhagic fevers.

Competencies

  1. Discuss the evolution and role of public health through history.
  2. List and discuss key figures of public health and the contributions they made to the field.
  3. Evaluate theories on the origins of selected epidemics.
  4. Establish the relationship between colonialism and epidemics.
  5. Determine how wars have contributed to epidemics around the world.
  6. Illustrate how philosophies of medicine evolved to the nineteenth century.
  7. Explain how selected epidemics changed the societies they impacted.
  8. Connect disease demographics to societal response and interventions.
  9. Establish the role of socioeconomic status on the occurrence and transmission of disease.

Goal Areas

5. History and the Social and Behavioral Sciences
8. Global Perspective