Syllabus for HLTH214: Environmental Health

Arindam Basu
arindam.basu@canterbury.ac.nz
03 369 3905
July 13, 2016

Contents
1 Goal

2 What will you learn?

3 Course Objectives

4 Course Coordinator and Contacts

5 Format of the Class

6 Assessments for this course

6.1 Weekly Open Book Online Quiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

6.2 Critique of an Environmental Health Impact Assessment . . . . .

7 Course Schedule

Goal

The goal of this course is to introduce the following key concepts of environmental and occupational health namely:
key definitions and concepts related to environment
association between environmental factors and health states
exposure assessments in environment
assess effectiveness of environmental exposure interventions designed
to improve health

What will you learn?

Environmental factors such as air pollution, soil pollution, water and sanitation
related problems, and increased temperature leading to global warming are
among the greatest potential threats to public health. In addition to environmental problems, we are also exposed to various agents in our workplaces and
recreational activities that threaten our health. As students and professionals in
public health, it is important to understand these threats and learn how to mitigate these threats to prevent illnesses and promote well-beings. This course
will equip you to understand and respond to these potential threats, through
their contribution to the public health workforce or as a foundation for postgraduate research in environmental and occupational health

Course Objectives

By the end of the course students will be able to:

Identify environmental and occupational factors which influence health
Recognise strategies which improve health by responding to environmental factors
Identify key environmental and occupational factors which affect global
health

Course Coordinator and Contacts

Dr Arindam Basu is the course coordinator.

His proflle

http://www.education.canterbury.ac.nz/healthsciences/people/basu.shtml
Email: arindam.basu@canterbury.ac.nz
Office address:
Room 225, Waimairi Building, College of Education
Arindams Office Phone Number:
03 369 3905 or Office Extension: 93905
Cell Phone Number: 022 629 0356

Twitter:@arinbasu

Format of the Class

1. Lectures (including guest lectures): Thursdays 12-2 PM at Wheki 204,
term time
2. Workshops (announced in class): Fridays 10-11 AM, Dovedale DA01,
term time
3. Field Trip (all day long): To be decided
4. Lecture Notes uploaded on Learn (here)
5. Assessments (See Assessment Section for details):

Assessments for this course

We will have two assessments for this course

1. Weekly Open Book Online Quiz for 10 weeks, each 5 marks
2. Critique of an Environmental Health Impact Assessment Paper due last
day of class

6.1

Weekly Open Book Online Quiz

Every week, I will upload an online quiz on Learn. This quiz will be open book
quiz. Each quiz will have only five multiple choice questions. Each mulitple
choice question will have one stem and five possible answers. You will need to
select the correct answer out of the five options. The content of the quiz will be
based on the topic taught on that week. At the end of the course, we will sum up
the scores of the quiz. There will be ten (10) such quizzes. On the first week, I
am going to post a trial quiz that I will not mark, so that you will get a sense of
what the quizzes will look like. From the 19th July week of studies onwards, I
will upload a quiz that I will mark. The quiz will mark itself, and you can make at
most two attempts. The quiz will post the best of two attempts. Each quiz will
be of ten minutes duration.
The purpose of this quiz or series of quizzes is to test whether you have learned
the most important points that we would cover in this course. The best way to
prepare for this quiz is to attend each weeks class, and take your own notes.
Read the article or book chapter or the notes that we will upload or refer to. All
the questions will be usually from these readings. Taken together, this quiz is
worth 50% of your overall grade for this course, so do not skip any quiz.
Here is an example of an online quiz.
What is the capital of New Zealand?
A- Auckland
B-Blenheim
C-Christchurch
D-Dunedin
W-Wellington
4

The question, What is the capital of New Zealand is referred to here as the
stem. Note that there there are five choices (Auckland, Blenheim, Christchurch,
Dunedin, and Wellington). Only Wellington is the correct answer here. If
you select this answer, then you will get a score of 1, else you will get a score
of 0. At the end of the test, all the correct answers will be added up and you
will get a score for that test. Near the end of the semester, you will get a total
score for all quizzes put together and will see a score marked out of 50.

6.2

Critique of an Environmental Health Impact Assessment

A very important part of learning environmental health is to understand the impact of environmental factors on our health. In this assignment, you will need
to submit a 2000 word critique of an environmental health impact assessment
paper. We shall provide you five papers (we shall only provide the links to the
papers, you will have to visit the links and download the papers yourselves or
obtain their full text versions). Then you will need to read the papers. After
reading the papers, critique the papers based on the guidelines we provide in
the templates below.
The length of your critique assignment will be 2000 words or less. This word
count does not include any words that you will put in the tables, figures, and
references. For this assignment, you will need to use one of the two document
templates that I have uploaded on Learn. Use these templates to write your
critique. In doing the critique, you will need to follow the steps of conducting an
environmental health impact assessment. Specifically, in each document that
you will review, you will need to report the following:
1. What is the health hazard and how did the authors identify hazard?
2. What exposure did the authors study?
3. What health outcomes did the authors study?
4. What was the dosage? How did the authors determine the dose of the
exposure?
5. What was the nature of the dose-response curve?
6. How much is the exposure?
7. How much outcome did the authors measure?

8. How did the authors select the studies?

9. How did the authors detect significant biases in the epidemiological studies that they evaluated?
10. Are the results believable?
Many different texts that discuss these criteria. You will also learn of these
criteria in due course. One resource that can be helpful is a WHO document
[2]. This document presents the results of a workshop and summarizes the
recommendations. Another good paper to consult is a study by Rushton and
Elliiott (2003) where they discussed several criteria you can use to judge the
quality of the epidemiological research [1]. We shall also provide additional
readings in this course.
This critique is worth 50 percent marks. We shall mark this assessment out of
a total of 50 marks. You will get a final mark out of the two components of assessment. The last date for submission of this assessment is on the last day of
class. We cannot extend this assessment. If you need special considerations,
please follow the appropriate university procedures for special considerations.

Course Schedule

Table 1: Weekly Schedule of Topics; all classes 12-2 PM, Wheki 204
Date

Topic

14th July

Session 1: Introduction to the course, and introduction to environmental health

21st July

Session 2: Environmental Epidemiology - 1: Descriptive Epidemiology

28th July

Session 3: Environmental Epidemiology Part 2: Causality and

Study Designs

4th August

Session 4: Study Designs in Occupational Health

11th August

Session 5: Human Health Risk Assessment I

18th August

Session 6: Human Health Risk Assessment II

8th September

Session 7: Health effects of Air Pollution

15th September

Session 8: Health effects of Water, Sanitation, and Health

22nd September

Session 9: Occupational Hazards

29th September

Session 10: Sustainability Issues

5th October,

Session 11: Health effects of Climate Change

14th October

Session 12: Wrap Up, Final Session

Table 2: Assessment Schedule

Assessment

Weight (%)

Due Date

Weekly Quiz

50

Due: Wednesday Night of Every Week

Essay

50

Due: 16th October, 2016, 5 PM

References
[1] Lesley Rushton and Paul Elliott. Evaluating evidence on environmental
health risks. British Medical Bulletin, 68(1):113128, 2003.
[2] World Health Organization. Evaluation and use of epidemiological evidence
for environmental health risk assessment: Guideline document. 2000.

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