Fall Course: MIEH606 Addressing Current, Pressing Global and Environmental Public Health Challenges in Bangladesh

MIEH606 Addressing Current, Pressing Global and Environmental Public Health Challenges in Bangladesh

Credits: 3

Restriction: Senior undergraduates may enroll with instructor's permission.

This course focuses on how to operationalize public health field research/practice on the ground in Bangladesh. The public health threat that will be addressed is solid waste management in Dhaka. With a landmass equivalent to the State of Wisconsin and the world's eighth largest population, Bangladesh is the most densely populated country on the globe. This course will give students the opportunity to collaborate virtually with students in Bangladesh. Every other lecture will be in-person.

Instructor: Dr. Muhiuddin Haider (mhaider@umd.edu)

F 8:30am - 10:00am

Blended course. Every other lecture will be in-person: SPH 2234CC

This course focuses on how to operationalize public health field research/practice on the ground in Bangladesh. The public health threat that will be addressed is solid waste management in Dhaka. With a landmass equivalent to the State of Wisconsin and the world’s eighth largest population, Bangladesh is the most densely populated country on the globe. While the potential concerns of achieving effective waste management throughout Dhaka and its surrounding areas will be explored in greater depth through this course, Bangladesh’s population density alone poses some immediate challenges to this end.

This unique course will be conducted as a “virtual classroom” between University of Maryland (UMD) and Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB), supported in part by the University of Maryland Office of International Affairs. Students at both Universities will work together to characterize the problems and potential solutions in collaboration with a local Social Business Enterprise, Waste Concern, which is currently supporting sustainable waste management work. Working within the framework of ongoing operations, students will develop a plan to conduct some research of benefit toWaste Concern. Next, data collection, analysis, and report development will be conducted. While UMD students will provide consultation to facilitate the field operations research conducted in this course, IUB students will interface directly with Waste Concern and take the lead on any primary data collection efforts, as well as dissemination of findings locally. While this course will meet once per week, every other week the meeting will take the form of a video conference so that students at UMD and IUB can work together throughout this course.

The goal is to investigate how global health operations are being conducted. The course emphasizes examination of the relationship between the environment and public health as well as collaborative approaches and implementation efforts used to advance the nexus of human health, natural resources, and sustainability. Dr. Muhiuddin Haider (mhaider@umd.edu) is the instructor at the UMD campus, and Dr. Shamsun Nahar Ahmed (naharahmed@gmail.com) is the instructor at IUB.