Focuses on factors associated with health status, health care, and health policies. Using an ecological approach, the course explores relationships among individual characteristics such as gender, education, income, literacy, race, ethnicity, culture, acculturation, disability, age, and sexual orientation; interpersonal factors such as communication with health care providers, family and social ties, and discrimination; and societal-level factors such as neighborhood and community context, health care organizations, economics, politics and policies and seeks to understand how those factors shape health behaviors, access to health care services, and health status locally, nationally, and globally. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. Prerequisite: Graduate standing.