Students will explore how different frameworks for clinical practise (e.g. Evidence-based Medicine, Person-Centered Healthcare) conceptualize evidence and how different methodologies impact how healthcare research is conceived, reported, and understood. Students will learn to critically appraise healthcare research studies and assess their evidence value and implications for clinical practice. Areas of focus will include climate change, global health, and clinical medicine. Students will explore concepts including the perception and communication of risk, the generalizability of research findings, probabilistic and mechanistic thinking, and the use and abuse of scientific authority and “expertise” in public discourse. The world is shrinking as money, goods, people, ideas, weapons, and information flow across national boundaries. Some commentators assert that a more tightly interconnected world can exacerbate financial disruptions, worsen the gap between rich and poor nations, undermine democracy, imperil national cultures, harm the environment, and give unconstrained freedom to predatory corporations. Others proclaim that globalization - understood as capitalism and free markets - fosters economic growth, encourages creative collaboration, inspires technological breakthroughs, and enhances human prospects for a better life, in rich and poor countries alike, in unprecedented ways. Our task is to evaluate the evidence and draw our own conclusions.
Students will explore how different frameworks for clinical practise (e.g. Evidence-based Medicine, Person-Centered Healthcare) conceptualize evidence and how different methodologies impact how healthcare research is conceived, reported, and understood. Students will learn to critically appraise healthcare research studies and assess their evidence value and implications for clinical practice. Areas of focus will include climate change, global health, and clinical medicine. Students will explore concepts including the perception and communication of risk, the generalizability of research findings, probabilistic and mechanistic thinking, and the use and abuse of scientific authority and “expertise” in public discourse. The world is shrinking as money, goods, people, ideas, weapons, and information flow across national boundaries. Some commentators assert that a more tightly interconnected world can exacerbate financial disruptions, worsen the gap between rich and poor nations, undermine democracy, imperil national cultures, harm the environment, and give unconstrained freedom to predatory corporations. Others proclaim that globalization - understood as capitalism and free markets - fosters economic growth, encourages creative collaboration, inspires technological breakthroughs, and enhances human prospects for a better life, in rich and poor countries alike, in unprecedented ways. Our task is to evaluate the evidence and draw our own conclusions.
