Teaching Health Disparities Awareness in Undergraduate Public Health Courses

Abstract

Disparities in health outcomes between U.S. population subgroups, related to factors like race/ethnicity, income, and geographic location, are alarming. By integrating health disparities awareness content into the curriculum, academic institutions can play an important role in developing conscious health practitioners to help close gaps in health outcomes. This paper presents the implementation, results and feedback of efforts to incorporate health disparities awareness content into two undergraduate public health courses at a rural Midwestern U.S. university. Throughout this process, the author’s work was supported by a faculty development program. Students completed pre- and post-surveys to report health disparities knowledge and attitudes and online course evaluations to rate instructor and curriculum elements. A statistically significant increase in mean scores occurred for survey items pre- to post-survey. Online course evaluation ratings revealed student progress on related outcomes and positive student experience. Findings suggest promise for teaching health disparities content in public health courses.

Keywords

• public health
• health disparities
• course development
• instructional delivery
• faculty development
• health education