IU Indianapolis Campus Bulletin 2024-2025

Explores concepts to integrate the expertise and efforts of health protection professionals into a broader organization/workplace to influence strategy and create impact. We will examine discipline-specific elements of management systems, establish professional skills, and navigate work situations and effective communication strategies for health protection.

Each year, thousands of workers throughout the world are killed, injured, or otherwise adversely affected by chemical, biological, and/or physical, agents encountered in the workplace. Common hazards include dusts, gases and vapors, bio-aerosols, pathogens, noise, and ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. Ergonomic stresses and safety hazards are also important causes of workplace morbidity and mortality. The goal of this course is to educate individuals to anticipate, recognize, evaluate, control, and manage such workplace health risks.

This course is a survey of the technical and regulatory aspects of protecting the health and safety of workers. Topics include basic toxicology; skin, eye, and respiratory hazards; measuring hazardous atmospheres; ventilation systems; fire and explosion hazards; emergency response; noise-induced hearing loss in the workplace; radiation; accident prevention; cumulative trauma; and personal protective equipment. The course provides students with an introduction to the principles and practice of industrial hygiene. Industrial hygiene is concerned with the anticipation, recognition, evaluation and control of environmental and occupational factors that pose hazards to health and safety in the workplace. These aspects parallel the basic components of risk assessment: hazard identification, dose-response determination, exposure assessment, risk assessment, and risk management. Greater attention is focused on anticipation, recognition, and evaluation, but some consideration of control methods and hazard communication will also be included. These functions all require a sound understanding of basic toxicology, procedures for investigation, methods of exposure measurement and assessment, behavior of chemical and physical agents in the environment, and the application of guidelines and standards, topics which form the primary elements of the course.

Human Health Risk Assessment is the basis for making decisions related to human health. This course will examine the basic principles and methods of conducting human health risk assessments and how risk is managed and communicated to the public. Applications emphasizing real scenario will be used to illustrate the interdisciplinary process and products of risk assessment, as well as the regulatory use of the information.

Examines product hazards against probable and misuse exposure scenarios that translate into a risk assessment. Explores a framework to asses risk throughout the product supply chain to determine and document appropriate and effective systems for ongoing assessment and management of product and business risk.

Critical examination of current issues in global health systems prepares students to confront organizational and policy challenges. Examine trends in global health reforms and governing structures. Explore leadership expectations of diverse stakeholders, inside and outside government, and how they may be met with critical thinking, analysis, and application.

Review basic research techniques used in health services research, including qualitative and quantitative methods. Special emphasis is placed on applying these skills in “real world” settings where data may not be perfect and conditions may make it necessary to compromise in applying research techniques used in more controlled settings.

This course introduces methods for identifying, exploring and evaluating literature relevant to students’ proposed dissertation topics in a scholarly and systematic way. The course also prepares students to effectively review research for decision-making and other applications in their roles as senior leaders in organizations.  

This course provides students with insights into timely issues relating to global health informatics. The course helps students understand current global challenges and opportunities in health informatics and equips them with the skills and knowledge they need to effectively identify and address information needs in organizations.

The course will focus on how development assistance for health (DAH) is changing and implications for the public’s health. Students will discuss global health related financial goals and priorities. They will become acquainted with principles of political economy and the structures and governance of financing institutions related to DAH worldwide.

Review frameworks for global policy processes then take an in-depth look at one approach and its basic steps, applying it to select cases. The course considers key concepts in development of an advocacy agenda using strategies tailored to the policy environment and designed to move policies in the desired direction.

This course focuses on theories and principles of strategic leadership of organizations with a mandate to provide health care services. Coursework will address such strategic leadership issues as a basis for ensuring resource efficiency and effective operations. The course also addresses strategic challenges relevant in a global context. 

Senior leaders must be aware of key concepts in marketing and PR. Fundraising efforts must be supported by organizational leaders to advance the interests of the organization and serve the public good. This course provides insights into executive competencies related to external relationships influenced through marketing, PR and organizational development. 

Review key evaluation theories and frameworks, selection of evaluation questions, evaluation design and data collection strategies, reporting evaluation results, and the political, ethical, and interpersonal considerations in evaluation. Some topics, including research design and data collection strategies, reinforce previous course content.

This course guides students through the steps necessary to produce the outline of a dissertation proposal. In collaboration with faculty, students will assess the current state of their research questions and literature reviews and generate work plans for revisions, additional refinements and the addition of preliminary ideas about methodology. 

This is the second in a two-part series to guide students through the steps necessary to produce a draft dissertation proposal. In close collaboration with course faculty and the students’ dissertation committee chairs and committee members, students will refine their proposals in preparation for oral defense. 

This course covers applied statistical methods for the analysis of categorical data with special emphasis on data collected from epidemiologic studies and general biomedical studies. The topics delivered in this course will focus on methods of categorical analysis commonly used in practice of the health sciences.

The course will focus on applications to real data, which will be analyzed by the professor and the students using the SAS software. One priority of the course will be to have students perform many analyses on real data sets, via SAS take-home labs, to prepare students for real life applications in analyzing data and interpreting results. Students will gain experience in preparing data for analyses by merging data sets and recoding variables.

This course examines the use of analytics and big data in the context of population health within governmental public health agencies as well as health systems. Students will be introduced to a host of methods used to analyze population health data, and gain technical skills required to perform analytics in support of real world use cases.

This course familiarizes students with the rationale, context, and underlying evidence surrounding U.S. health care reimbursement models, including managed care, prospective payment, and value-based purchasing. The population health management framework is then presented as a unifying framework to guide health administrators towards success given new reimbursement models.

This course provides an applied practice experience in which students integrate concepts from core and concentration courses, conduct projects, solve problems, gain valuable work experience, and interact with professionals in public health informatics. The student works with the faculty advisor and an academically and professionally qualified preceptor in the agency.

A combination of experiential (learn by doing) and lecture formatted learning aimed at introducing students to the concept of Lean thinking and leadership in healthcare organizations. Within the course students will be introduced to: the history of Lean and its rise in healthcare, identification and quantification of the value of waste removal in process oriented work systems, Lean thinking, facilitation, tools and leadership. Students will work independently and in small groups.

This course examines the marketing function and the marketing mix; philosophy and principles behind a marketing-driven health service organization; the dynamic healthcare environment; healthcare consumers; marketing research; the promotional mix; and the role marketing management plays in today’s health service organization.

Known as the “capstone” course, a final semester course in the MHA program that utilizes the capstone project as the central component of learning for the course. The capstone project is a healthcare service organization-sponsored project of significant importance to the sponsor as well as demanding of the student to apply knowledge and skills to a real administrative issue. The project requires students to utilize a variety of skills, including interpersonal, conceptual, critical thinking, report and executive writing, oral presentation, coordination and organization to satisfactorily fulfill the capstone project requirements.

Guest lecturers in healthcare executive roles are invited to share administrative and leadership challenges, strategic management issues and experiences, and operating challenges from the health services field. Guest lecturers provide valuable insight to facilitate the transition from the academic setting to the health care industry workplace. The class will also emphasize the development of personal leadership philosophies and principles. The development of a personal set of leadership philosophies and principles is designed to help prepare the students for early career success and to set a foundation for professional growth and development. 

This course aims to develop the student’s knowledge and ability in strategic management in health services organizations. Based on an introduction to the general process model of strategic management, the course will engage in detailed discussions of a series of topics in strategic management. These topics include the identification of the organization’s mission, vision, and values, the analysis of the external and internal environment of the organization, the identification of strategic challenges and opportunities, the development of strategies, the evaluation of strategies, the communication of strategies, and the development and evaluation of an action plan.

The course emphasizes the unique strategic challenges facing health services organizations and their leadership, and aims to develop accordingly the student’s ability to identify, analyze and address these challenges.

The course utilizes lectures, group discussion, and real-life case studies to facilitate the understanding of basic course content and the conceptual model of strategic management. Students will also be required to analyze a strategic case and apply the conceptual strategic planning process.

This course introduces the management of healthcare information systems. Topics include analyzing system requirements, system design and evaluation, selecting computer resources, and managing the implementation process.

Public health law is law that affects the health conditions of populations. In the United States, this contrasts with medical law or general health law, which focus more on the health-care delivery system and physician-patient relationships.

This course is an introduction to the role of ethics in population health-related programs, policymaking, professions and research.

The capstone project, or integrated learning experience (ILE), represents the culminating experience in the MPH program. Students’ ILE must demonstrate synthesis of foundational and concentration competencies in public health informatics. In consultation with their faculty advisor, students select foundational and concentration-specific competencies appropriate to their educational and professional goals.

This course exposes PhD students to research designs used in health policy and management literature. Topics covered include types of study designs, including their benefits and drawbacks, with a strong focus on casual inference. Students will gain an improved grasp of the interdisciplinary language of HPM research.

This is a qualitative research methods course for doctoral students. Emphasis will be placed on ethnographic field methods as they apply to understanding the organization, implementation, and evaluation of health services. Students will: learn qualitative research design; collect, manage, and analyze qualitative data; and report qualitative findings.

This seminar is the introductory seminar for HPM doctoral students and should be taken in the first or second year of your graduate study. The broad goal of the course is to help you develop your skills in analytic reasoning, critical thinking, knowledge translation, and professional self-reflection necessary for a successful research career.

This course is designed to introduce students to the social and behavioral science principles that provide the foundation for health program planning and disease prevention with an emphasis on population-based public health approaches. Students will explore topics that promote a broader and better understanding of determinants of health; the multiple factors contributing to health and illness behaviors; and the fundamentals, theories and principles that shed light on health and illness behaviors.

This course examines the U.S. health care and public health systems including the structure, components, and financing of these systems. Ethical concepts, policy making, implementation, and impacts of major health care and public health policies will be discussed.

This course will introduce students to basic epidemiologic concepts, including determinants of health and patterns of disease in populations, population health descriptive techniques, use of health indicators, and secondary data sources. Students will gain an understanding of the role of epidemiology in developing prevention strategies and policy. Among the topics to be covered are measures of mortality and morbidity, design and analysis of observational studies, community health assessment, and program evaluation.

The course focuses on environmental health, which is the branch of public health that protects against the effects of environmental hazards that can adversely affect health or the ecological balances essential to human health and environmental quality. The environment influences many aspects of human health and well-being. Many diseases are initiated, promoted, sustained, or stimulated by environmental factors. For these reasons, the interactions people have with their environment are an important component of public health.

This course introduces the basic principles and methods of data analysis in public health biostatistics. Emphasis is placed on public health examples as they relate to concepts such as sampling, study design, descriptive statistics, probability, statistical distributions, estimation, hypothesis testing, chi-square tests, t-tests, analysis of variance, linear regression, and correlation.

This course integrates public health theory and practice in a practice setting. Students have the opportunity to apply concepts from core and concentration courses, conduct projects, and interact with a range of health professionals. Students work both with a faculty advisor and qualified preceptor in the agency.

This course is designed to expose the student to published material on a specific topic or technique in the field of public health. The material to be studied will be determined primarily by the student under the direction of a faculty member with input from the student's concentration advisor. The student is expected to work closely with the faculty member to develop a strategy to identify the material to study, plan a time frame for completion of the study, and to determine the nature of the study product. Generally, the product will be a summary and interpretation of the material studied in a literature review format. The student and faculty member will complete a written agreement, which outlines the scope of work for the semester. This agreement will also be signed by the concentration advisor.

Continuous enrollment in a one-credit course designed for MPH students who have completed all MPH requirements except the final concentration project are required to enroll in P700 no more than four times.