Instructor of Record

The Politics of Public Health (Fall 2024, Summer 2025)

Course description: When people think of health policy, they often think of topics pertaining to medical care. Yet there are many domains of health policy that extend beyond the scope of medical care, and which have far-reaching implications and consequences for people of all demographics. This course focuses on the social, economic, and political factors that shape population rather than individual health, and employs public health topics to illustrate the fundamental problems of regulation and social policy. This course will cover the myriad substantive topics in public health policy, such as the market for healthcare, health disparities, environmental exposure and risk, policing and homelessness, tobacco regulation, nutrition, health care rationing, and poverty.

In addition, we will analyze the politics behind these important policy topics. The overall objective of this course is to examine public health policies and politics in order to illustrate many of the foundational concepts of the political science of regulation and social policy. These concepts include market failures, externalities, asymmetric information, risk perception, inequality, lobbying, and democratic participation. Thus, in studying the fundamental substantive issues of public health policy, students will also gain theoretical insights and analytical skills for the general study of politics. As such, this course will also equip students with the knowledge and skills to advance in a career in academic disciplines such as political science, sociology, economics, or public policy, or to succeed in the professional worlds of law, medicine, or policy analysis.

Teaching Assistant

  • American Politics (Winter 2021, Fall 2022, Spring 2022, Winter 2023)

  • American State Politics (Fall 2025)

  • Comparative Politics (Fall 2021)

  • Constitutional Law: Criminal Justice (Summer 2022)

  • Political Behavior in Comparative Perspective (Winter 2025)

  • Politics and Economic Policy: International Relations (Winter 2024)

  • The Politics of Public Health (Spring 2024)

  • The Politics of Race, Immigration, and Ethnicity (Spring 2025)

  • World Politics (Fall 2020, Spring 2021)

Reader

  • American State Politics (Fall 2023)

  • Money in American Politics (Winter 2020, Fall 2020, Summer 2023, Summer 2025)

  • Race and Law Enforcement (Spring 2023, Spring 2025)

  • The U.S. Congress (Fall 2023)

  • Women in Politics (Spring 2020)