Duke University, through the Center for Health Policy, Law and Mangement, offers an interdisciplinary certificate in Health Policy. The program speaks to the needs of students prepraring for careers in health care policy, management and the associate professions as the American health care industry enters into a period of rapid and profound change.

The mission of the Duke Center for Clinical Health Policy Research (CCHPR)  is to encourage the formation and implementation of sound clinical health care policies.

Elements involved with the formation of clinical health policy require an understanding of what the decision-maker (doctor, patient, administrator) requires in order to make an informed decision, synthesizing and interpreting available evidence in a way that addresses those information needs, and establishing new research efforts to fill in gaps in existing knowledge. Implementation of clinical health policy involves analyzing current practices, comparing current practices with optimal practice, designing strategies for practice improvement, and evaluating the effects of these intervention strategies.

Sponsor

The Terry Stanford Institute of Public Policy

Supervisor

Christopher J Conover, Ph.D.

Learning Objectives

• To investigate the machinery of broad political dynamics which have conditioned American health policy, past and present
• To familiarize students with the institutional and economic foundations of American health care through study of the interaction between the key players in health care financing and organization employers, private insurance carriers, government regulators, health care providers and consumers
• To explore the cultural and ideological underpinnings of modern conceptions of health and the recurrent ethical dilemmas facing health care providers and policy-makers

Successful candidates must complete the prescribed combination of five courses: two courses drawn from the core set of health policy course offerings; any two additional elective courses*; and the capstone course, PPS 255 Health Policy Analysis. Appropriate courses may come from the enclosed list or may include other courses (new courses, special topics courses, independent study, and, under special circumstances, courses offered through the UNC School of Public Health) as approved by the director.

The Health Policy Certificate website contains the most complete and current list of courses that are offered each semester: http://www.hpolicy.duke.edu/certificate.

Curriculum

Core Courses (Any 2 Courses)

ECON 2155: Applies Cost Benefit Analysis
ECON 356: Graduate Health Economics I
ECON 357: Seminar in Health Economics
HLTHMGMT 326: Fundamentals of Health Care Markets
LAW 347: Health Care Law and Policy
MGRECON 408: Health Care Policy
PUBPOL 253 & POL SCI 249: The Politics of Health Care
PUBPOL 261/ECON 261/ENV 272: Evaluation of Public Expenditures
PUBPOL 263S.01: Health Policy: Prevention and Management
PUBPOL 264S.07: Getting Value for Money in Health Care
PUBPOL 264S.72: Managed Care
SOCIOL 227S.C: Organization and Financing of Health Care

ELECTIVE COURSES (Any 2 Courses)*
CFM 247B: Medicine in America
CFM 256C: Ethical Issues in Medicine
CFM 258C: Legal Issues in Medicine
CRTP 244: Health Economics in Clinical Research
ECON 372: Environmental/Natural Resource Economics
ENVIRON 270L: Resource and Environmental Economics
ENVIRON 271: Econ. Analysis Resource/Environmental Policies
ENVIRON 274: Resource and Environmental Policy
ENVIRON 343: Hazard Management, Law and Ethics
ENVIRON 385: decision Theory and Risk Analysis
HIST 279: Health, Healing and History
IDC 300C, LAW 580: Seminar in Medical-Legal-Ethical Issues
IDC 302C: Cross-Cultural Challenges to Medicine in 21st Century
LAW 235: Environmental Law
LAW 301L AIDS Law
LAW 547: Food and Drug Law
LAW 550: health Care Financing and Competition
LAW 555: International Envirionmental Law
LAW 596: Toxic Substance Regulation
LAW 598: Violence, the Media and the Law
LS 290.30: Adult Development and Aging
LS 290.45: Health Care, Narrative, and Social Theory
LS 290.45: Aging and Health
LS 290.52: Madness and Society
LS 290.57: Death and Dying
NURSING 303: Issues in Contemporary Health Care Organizations
NURSING 362: Ethics in Nursing
NURSING 370: Social Issues, Health, & Illness in the Aged Years
PHY ASST 250: Health Systems Organization
POLSCI 176a & b: Perspectives on Food and Hunger
PUBPOL 264.70: Social Policy Implementation
PUBPOL 264.32: Matters of Life and Death
PUBPOL 266S: Comparative Social Policy
SOCIOL 171: Comparative Health Care Systems
SOCIOL 227s, b: Social Behavior and Health
SOCIOL 227S, D: Health and Aging
XTIANETH 130: Dying and Death
XTIANETH 266: Ethics and Health Care

Health Policy Certificate Program Education Committee

Christopher J. Conover, Ph.D.
Director, Health Policy Certificate Program
Assistant Research Professor, Department of Public Policy Studies

Frank A. Sloan, Ph.D.
J. Alexander McMahon Professor of Health
Policy & Management, Center for Health
Policy, Law and Management
Professor, Department of Economics

Kevin Schulman, M.D.
Director, Health Sector Management Program, Fuqua School of Business
Associate Professor, Department of Medicine

Margaret Humphreys, M.D. Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of History
Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine
Elizabeth Richardson Vigdor, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Public Policy Studies

Linda K. George, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Sociology
Associate Director, Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development

Russel E. Kaufman, M.D.
Vice Dean for Education, School of Medicine
Professor, Department of Medicine

Thomas B. Metzloff
Professor, School of Law