Global Health Capstone Curriculum

The course will explore how to approach persistent administrative and policy problems using an interdisciplinary approach. It will draw from the disciplinary skills and knowledge of students in the course and challenge students to use that knowledge in collaborative and creative ways to solve real world problems. Students will take on an administrative, strategy, or policy problem in interdisciplinary teams. Building on each disciplinary strength–social welfare frameworks, policy analysis, and business (management, financial, etc.) strategy–students will provide a set of recommendations and an action plan to approach the health problem. Topics will be provided by the instructor; students will have the opportunity to express their preferences regarding the cases. The course will include numerous cases and will focus on the process of interdisciplinary teamwork as well as on solving the complex problem.

Team Based Learning

In the GPHAP capstone course, Key Issues in Health Care: An Interdisciplinary Case Studies Approach, interdisciplinary teams of students work on complex problems faced by organizations in the health care field. Approximately seven teams are formed, each with one business, one policy, one social work, and one law student. Each team receives a different complex problem that is actually being grappled with by organizations in the field. The team is then charged with coming up with an interdisciplinary solution that brings the strengths and knowledge of each of the disciplines to solve the problem. The teams meet several times with the case mentor, often a senior executive at the organization. Each team has an opportunity to report on their progress to a panel of experts that includes the case mentor. All the students in the class hear those presentations so the learning goes beyond just one’s own case. The teams are responsible for providing a detailed annotated powerpoint presentation to the organization at the end of the course.