Death 101: Shaping the Future of Global Health
The University of Toronto’s new free online course (MOOC) called Death 101: Shaping the Future of Global Health premieres on www.edx.org March 2nd 2015. Register now at edX!
CGHR founding director Prof. Prabhat Jha teaches students the value of studying the dead to help the living. Large improvements in health can be made in the neediest populations by effectively addressing the major causes of death with health policy and action.
Death 101 enables students to investigate health problems affecting large populations – the whole world in fact! By understanding the big numbers in global mortality and their causes and distributions, this course teaches you to think numerically about global health. We use real data from real people to ask the questions: What are the major causes of death in the world? Why do we need cause of death statistics? How does counting the dead help the living? Death 101 is designed for MOOC students and is built for online learning.
We begin with an historical perspective on global mortality and end with a hopeful look toward future trends. In between, you will learn about the avoidability of death prior to old age, specific diseases such as HIV, malaria, childhood conditions, chronic diseases, and risk factors such as smoking. Death 101 will help you use population statistics to understand how rapid gains in health are possible.
To follow along with the edX course use the twitter hashtags #death101
Death 101 was developed solely for www.edx.org and special attention had been paid to delivering an effective student experience tailored to the online environment. This course is the fourth University of Toronto course to debut on www.edx.org and the first in global health. EdX is a non-profit organization dedicated to expanding free, quality online education around the world.