Climate change is an urgent and multifaceted challenge facing all of society.
Harvard faculty teach an expanding array of courses examining the many dimensions of this shared challenge. Explore courses in climate and sustainability ranging from economics and English to public health and climate science.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
THE SALATA INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE AND SUSTAINABILITY
This course examines application of epidemiologic methods to environmental and occupational health problems. Objectives are to review methods used in evaluating the health effects of physical and chemical agents in the environment, to review available evidence on the health effects of such exposures, and to consider policy questions raised by the scientific evidence.
The world’s economic and political order reels under mounting challenges that predate the Covid pandemic, and have deepened in its aftermath: climate change, authoritarian populism, global financial fragility, a slowdown in economic growth and productivity, the aggravation of inequality, the risks of AI, the rise of middle powers and geopolitical competition between the U.S. and China, and the stalling in global poverty reduction.
This course explores the varied roles that international lawyers and international institutions have played in shaping responses to climate change, the competing legal projects and strategies that they have developed to do so, and the shifting geopolitical contexts in which this work is taking place.
The graduate workshop on Climate Sociology offers a venue for discussing new research that takes a sociological perspective toward climate change. Such perspectives include Environmental Sociology as well as areas of the field that have tended to develop independently of the problems of climate change, such as Social Organization, Social Stratification, Culture, Gender, Immigration, Political Sociology, and Race and Ethnicity.
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the complexities of and best practices for community engaged/action research and collaboration. Students will integrate skills and knowledge from their environmental health training to address community interests/needs.
An introduction to environmental policy in the US with a focus on the Environmental Protection Agency. We will explore how policy is made at the federal and state levels and consider the actors who design policies, including legislators, agencies, advocates, regulated companies, and the courts.
This course examines application of epidemiologic methods to environmental and occupational health problems. Objectives are to review methods used in evaluating the health effects of physical and chemical agents in the environment, to review available evidence on the health effects of such exposures, and to consider policy questions raised by the scientific evidence.
This winter session travel course will introduce students to the intersections of climate change, air quality and health for populations in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Students will apply epidemiological tools to examine environmental exposures and health vulnerabilities that are unique to this region.
Through an experiential learning approach, the course will present systematic tools and methods to engage in complex negotiations in a proactive, critical, and practical manner. Based on several years of empirical research on negotiation practices on the frontlines of conflict, health crises and natural disasters, it will equip students with the practical competences and interpersonal skills required to navigate crisis negotiation as well as facilitate learning through the experience of seasoned practitioners working in these environments.
Public health students have few academic opportunities to engage with the profound themes of grief, loss, and death, even in an era of pandemics, climate change, and widening health disparities.
This course was developed because the practice of medicine and public health in this century will require an understanding of the relationship between human health and the global environment.