Course

 Course Coordinators.         Dr. Anne Hicks & Alvaro R. Osornio Vargas

Credit Hours.                       3

Class Contact Hours.            two 1.5-hour sessions every week

Semesters.                            Winter

Other formal details.           Sessions Mondays & Wednesdays, 3:00 – 4:20 pm

Purpose of the Course

  Public awareness of environmental threats to the health of children is increasing. However, science is needed to guide decision-making at the clinical and policy level. A multidisciplinary approach is required to reach these goals due to the complex nature of the issues. Therefore, this course aims to provide students with research-oriented training in Children’s Health and the Environment (CHE), from multiple disciplines.

Course Description

  This course will provide an introductory overview of current knowledge and challenges related to environmental influences affecting children's health. We aim to build competence in identifying relationships between environmental impacts and common childhood morbidities and mortalities, child development, and early determinants of adulthood health related to costly program spending and sustainability. In addition, it will promote multidisciplinary learning to better understand CHE's many complex and relevant aspects. Understanding will be achieved by reviewing relevant literature on current CHE issues; this knowledge will form the foundation for vivid discussions around research and its implications on children’s environmental health.

Learning Objectives

 Students will:

 ·      Identify the role of the environment in health, particularly in children.

·      Identify why children are particularly more vulnerable to environmental threats.

·      Identify the most influential children’s windows of vulnerability.

·      Identify major environmental threats and how they are measured.

·      Describe the significant pathways of children's exposure to environmental hazards.

·      Identify current biomonitoring methods and studies and their significance.

·      Describe substantial challenges related to the establishment of causality in CHE.

·      Describe primary CHE conditions representative of exposures to environmental hazards.

·      Describe known mechanisms involved in developing those specific representative CHE conditions.

·      Consider the potential influence of behavioural, social, economic, and political factors on relationships between environmental hazards and children's health.

·      Identify major stakeholders related to environmental health hazards and health for children, from research to regulation, including knowledge translation and risk communication.

·      Interpret relevant scientific literature.

·      After group work and discussion, design a study to apply basic strategies for assessing, controlling/managing, and preventing a specific health and safety hazard for children in a specific environmental setting.

·      Organize collected data and information, assign tasks to each participant, prepare a paper, and

·      Communicate information as addressing the general public and media.

Course Format

  This interactive course will rely on active student participation. Faculty will only provide required introductory and conceptual frameworks to each topic in the syllabus addressing current examples. Faculty will engage the students in self-learning and active participation. Seminars will be used as the main activity to accomplish this. Principal coordinators will bridge between faculty to guarantee congruency and consistency of the teaching activities. In addition, during the first quarter of the course, the students will choose a research problem based on an issue of interest to be developed as a review article. The issue of interest will be presented as a letter of intent at mid-term and as a full paper at the end of the semester, followed by an oral presentation addressing a lay audience.

Student Evaluation Requirements

  Graduate students who are registered for the course will be evaluated as follows. One of the two-course coordinators will be able to complete the evaluation with help of other faculty members when applicable.

·        Continuous evaluation – participation, group discussion, etc. (20%)

·        A letter of intent (25%)

·        Review article (30%)

·        Presentation of the review article (25%)

The student can evaluate the course and Instructor/Faculty according to the university’s practice.