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Most online learning platforms aim to provide mass affordable access to education — something that’s increasingly and especially important in areas like public health.
To help healthcare professionals and medical students gain crucial — even life-saving — skills quickly and flexibly, Coursera, which already hosts over 3,000 affordable online courses, also currently offers 12 public health courses completely for free.
The courses span topics ranging from disaster preparedness and infection prevention in nursing homes to disease screening in epidemics. Students can learn the essentials of global health from Yale University, as well as what a disease cluster is from Johns Hopkins University, all free of cost, or they can pay for optional certificates (usually $49) to add to their resumes or LinkedIn profiles.
Offered by: IMPA + Osmosis
Length: 3 hours
Osmosis, a medical education site founded by former Johns Hopkins medical students, created this CME-eligible course for COVID-19. It’s regularly updated with current information about the novel coronavirus and aggregates information issued by the CDC, WHO, and other leading agencies. The class covers the basics, as well as personal protective equipment, diagnostics, and other related material. Healthcare professionals can earn CME credit.
Offered by: The University of Pittsburgh
Length: 13 hours
This course tries to answer the question: what can we do to prevent outbreaks of infectious diseases from becoming epidemics or pandemic?
Students learn about infectious diseases and medical responses, focusing on public health laws and policies that provide the framework for effective prevention like quarantine laws, drug development policies, bioterrorism, and biodefense.
Offered by: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Length: 8 hours
In this course, students learn about the role that the environment plays in disease transmission and how to implement standard and transmission-based precautions to prevent the spread of bacteria and infections in elderly care facilities.
Offered by: Emory University
Length: 8 hours
This course introduces a basic framework of concepts and principles of communication during a global crisis or emergency including why such communication is different, as well as the importance of adapting emergency messages to the needs of affected populations.
Students use sample scenarios to identify information needs and develop useful messages that communicate effectively and promote behaviors that reduce health risks during an emergency.
Communicating During Global Emergencies was designed in collaboration with the Emory Rollins School of Public Health and the CDC’s Division of Global Health Protection, Emergency Response, and Recovery Branch.
Offered by: Yale University
Length: 70 hours
Essentials of Global Health course takes a global perspective but emphasizes low- and middle-income countries, the health of the poor, and health disparities.
Students pay particular attention to issues within health systems; the links between health and development, and health matters related to global interdependence.
The course is primarily structured around five questions: What do people get sick, disabled, and die from? Why do they suffer from these conditions? Which people are most affected? Why should we care about such concerns? And, most importantly, what can be done to address key health issues, hopefully at least cost, as fast as possible, and in sustainable ways?
Offered by: Duke University
Length: 20 hours
Taught by Dr. David Boyd, an award-winning professor at Duke’s Global Health Institute, The Challenges of Global Health provides students with a concise but comprehensive foundation for approaching global health problems. The class examines what the world’s major health challenges are, what contributes to them, and what we can do to improve health outcomes and reduce health disparities.
Offered by: Imperial College London + Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (J-IDEA)
Length: 16 hours
This course features insight directly from experts about the theory behind the analysis of COVID-19 and its spread, as well as how to interpret new information using core principles of public health, epidemiology, medicine, health economics, and social science.
Students watch regular situation reports about the state of the epidemic, provided by the researchers of J-IDEA and its director, Professor Neil Ferguson.
Offered by: The University of Geneva
Length: 19 hours
This course constructs an interdisciplinary overview of our current global health challenges using insights from medicine, public health, law, economics, social sciences, and humanities. Students use these as guides for seven critical topics in global health.
Offered by: The University of Pittsburgh
Length: 13 hours
This course is best for proactive people looking to improve their disaster readiness and survival planning. It introduces the disaster cycle and specifically focuses on mitigation and recovery phases. Students create an extensive personal preparedness plan in the absence of resources like food, water, shelter, and communication.
Offered by: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Length: 7 hours
This course explores public health issues like cardiovascular and infectious diseases, both locally and globally, through the perspective of epidemiology.
Offered by: The University of Geneva + The University of Lausanne
Length: 22 hours
This course, designed by two major Swiss universities, is designed to aid in critically assessing the promises and the pitfalls of disease screening strategies.
The course helps students understand important concepts for disease screening programs that are explored through a series of examples most relevant to public health today. The class concludes with expert interviews that explore vital future topics.
Offered by: Johns Hopkins University
Length: 7 hours
This course teaches students what disease clusters are, how they are examined, and the challenges posed in studying them. The course’s goal is to empower community scientists and to build better relationships between communities and health officials.
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