MHST 620 -  Culture and Health

This version of MHST 620 closed. To current version.

Delivery mode:  Paced/home-study online
Credits: 3 - Applied Studies
Prerequisite: n/a
Precluded courses: n/a

1.0 Introduction | 2.0 Course Goals | 3.0 Course Materials | 4.0 Course Structure | 5.0 Course Outline | 6.0 Assessment Structure

1.0     Introduction

This course will critically examine the relationship between cultural factors and health/health care delivery. Students will explore how ethnicity, gender, social class, and the organization of health disciplines and health systems influence opportunities for health and the delivery of health care to clients, particularly vulnerable or marginalized populations.

2.0     Course Goals

After completing this course, students should be able to:  

  1. Develop a contextual understanding of culture, including influences such as social class,
    gender, and ethnicity.

  2. Develop a critical understanding of how evidence is constructed and knowledge legitimized in
    differing worldviews. 

  3. Develop a critical perspective of the relationships between culture and health/health care
    delivery. 

  4. Suggest ways to apply a critical perspective of culture and health in health care leadership
    roles. 

  5. Accept the personal challenge of awareness-reflection-action in personal and professional ways of thinking and doing.

3.0     Course Materials 

MHST 620 is comprised of both Online and Print-based course materials.

Online Materials

  • Introduction: Provides essential information about the course materials, the design of the course, and the procedures you should follow to complete the course successfully.
  • Schedule: Outlines the timing of course activities
  • Units: Contains the six units that comprise the course
  • Assessment: Outlines the assignments/evaluation procedures of the course.
  • Reference: Listing of required readings, web sites, and citations included in the units

Print Materials

  • Reading File: A collection of articles, excerpts, and other sources of information that you will be directed to read in this course.
  • Textbooks: The textbook listed below is used in this course.

     Coburn, D., D'Arcy, C., & Torrance, G. (1998). Health and Canadian society: Sociological perspectives (3rd ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

4.0     Course Structure  

The course includes Internet access to health-related Web sites around the world, participation in electronic mail, and computer conferencing with students from across the country. Students are expected to connect to an Internet Service Provider at their own expense.

5.0     Course Outline  

  • Unit 1 Awareness: Understandings of Health and Culture
  • Unit 2 Awareness: Critical Theory Perspectives
  • Unit 3 Awareness:
    Discourse Analysis
  • Unit 4 Reflection: Health and the Cultures of Social Class, Gender, and Ethnicity 
  • Unit 5 Reflection: The Cultures of Health Care
  • Unit 6 Action: Transforming Health Care 

6.0     Assessment Structure  

To receive credit for MHST 620, students must achieve a course composite grade of at least 60 per cent and a grade of at least 60 per cent on each written assignment. The weighting of the composite grade is as follows:

Conference 

Forum Leadership

Assignment 1

Assignment 2

Total

20%

 25% 30% 25% 100%

Feedback on Conference Participation (20%)

Feedback regarding conference participation will be ongoing. Quality of input (not quantity) is the goal. Feedback will focus on your ability to provide organized and original contributions that reflect analysis and synthesis of the material presented.  

Participation Criteria  

The assessment structure for Master of Health Studies 620 indicates that 20% of your final grade will be determined by your participation in the course. Your participation will be measured against the following criteria. Keep these criteria in mind as you proceed through the course, and gauge your own efforts toward achieving your full share of this significant portion of your course grade.  

  1. Complete on-line contributions during the unit forum timeframe.

  2. Respond to online discussions at least twice each week.

  3. Contribute original thoughts or ideas to online discussions.  

  4. Cite relevant resources to validate points made.

  5. Demonstrate openness to divergent points of view.

  6. Be respectful of the perceptions of others.  

  7. Integrate material from previous units to formulate ideas and generate dialogue. 

  8. Present responses that follow the rules of grammar and spelling in the online contributions. 

Critical Forum Leadership (25%)

In the first two weeks of the course, the class will be divided into five groups.  Each of the five groups will be assigned the responsibility of leading a critical forum about one of five cultural factors influencing health care delivery: social class, gender, ethnicity, the culture of health professions and the culture of health care systems. These cultural factors are included in Units 4 and 5. 

Each group will have 5 days in which to lead its forum, as identified in the course schedule.  At the end of the 5-day period,  the group leading the forum will prepare a concise synthesis of the discussions, summarizing the main points of the forum.  The synthesis will be posted to the forum no later than 1 week following the conclusion of the 5-day forum.  

Critical Forum Leadership is worth 25% of your course grade.  Of this, 10% will be awarded for the group's leadership in fostering a forum that creates free communication, according to the criteria included below.  The remaining 15% will be awarded for the group's synthesis of the forum discussions.

The expectations for Critical Forum Leadership are:

  1. Selected readings about the cultural factors identified from your textbooks, Reading File and web sites are already included in Unit 4 and 5.  It is expected that all class members will prepare for the critical forums by reviewing these resources.  In addition, the group leading the forum will identify at least two additional web sites and two additional on-line articles relevant to the forum topic.  The group should post information about these in the forum in a posting with the subject title "Additional Forum Resources."
  1. The group will lead the class in a forum on the topic, generating discussion in response to the following questions about the topic:

a)   What paradigms are present in the discourse of the topic and what paradigm dominates the discourse?  Justify your answers by referring to evidence of underlying assumptions about the world, human behaviour, and health care.

b)   How are the power relations among the differing parties depicted in the discourse about the topic (for example, between clients and health care providers, between different disciplines, between different views within one profession, etc)?

c)   Whose interests are served by the discourse about the topic?

d)   What silences are present: that is, what views and voices are not heard?

e)   What “discourses of resistance” could challenge the dominant discourse about the topic?

f)    Based on the above, what actions could be taken to transform health care in a direction of equity?

  1. No later than 1 week following the forum, the group will post to the forum a concise synthesis (maximum 8 pages) of the forum discussions, organized around the questions above.  In addition, the synthesis will include an evaluation of the extent to which the forum was able to meet criteria for free and unconstrained discourse:

a)      elicit differing perspectives of the topic,

b)      affirm differing experiences of participants,

c)      recognize contradictions in the discourse, and

d)      suggest ways to take action.

Assignment 1:  Critical Reflection on Discourse (30%) | Due: Week 8 |

Assignment 1 invites you to analyze the discourse around a health-related topic relevant to your practice setting.  You will locate resources that comprise the discourse about a health-related topic and analyze this discourse to determine the ways the topic is discussed and understood in our society.  Assignment 1 is worth 30 % of your course grade and is due by the end of Week 8 of the course.  This assignment should be submitted to your course instructor as a mail attachment.

Choose a health-related topic relevant to your practice setting.  If you are unsure if your topic is appropriate for the assignment, please discuss your topic with your course instructor.  Locate resources relevant to the topic, such as books, on-line or paper-based journal articles, web sites, stories in the popular press, publications used in your health setting, and interviews with key informants.   These resources form the discourse that is significant to the topic. 

Analyze this discourse by answering the following questions:

  1. What paradigms are present in the discourse of the topic and what paradigm dominates the discourse?  Justify your answers by referring to evidence of underlying assumptions about the world, human behaviour, and health care.
  2. How is discourse about the topic influenced by considerations of cultural factors?
  3. How are the power relations among the differing parties depicted in the discourse about the topic?
  4. Whose interests are served by the by the discourse about the topic?
  5. What silences are present: that is, what views and voices are not heard?
  6. What “discourses of resistance” could challenge the dominant discourse about the topic?

Assignment 2: Action to Transform Health Care (25%) | Due: Week 13 |

Assignment 2 asks you to discuss how the discourse from Assignment 1 is evident in your practice setting, the influence of this on health care delivery, and actions that could transform the discourse to improve health care delivery.  Assignment 2 is worth 25% of your course grade and is due by the end of Week 13 of the course.  This assignment should be submitted to your course instructor as a mail attachment.

Athabasca University reserves the right to amend course outlines occasionally and without notice.
Note: This syllabus was last updated January 2002
Page last edited: January 30, 2002 ©Copyright 2002 Athabasca University
For questions or comments regarding this site email: []