Program Overview

Introduction to the Certificate in Sexuality, Sexual and Reproductive Health

The Certificate in Sexuality, Sexual and Reproductive Health is a comprehensive program that approaches sexual and reproductive health as states of physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being. This certificate program is designed to explore and challenge the social inequalities that have had profound effects on sexuality and health.

Program Overview

• The program is open to Columbia MPH students in the following departments:
  • Biostatistics
  • Environmental Health Sciences
  • Epidemiology
  • Health Policy and Management
  • Population and Family Health
  • Sociomedical Sciences
• Students can specialize as researchers or practitioners and emerge prepared to work in agencies and organizations involved in programmatic or advocacy work, policy or evaluation research, or in direct service delivery.

Competencies

The competencies for this certificate are as follows:

1. Explain the strengths and limitations of relevant social and behavioral scientific theories of sexuality and sexual and reproductive health (SRH), and apply them to research, policy, or programs.
2. Analyze major sexual and reproductive health issues in a manner that reflects an understanding of empirical, methodological, and theoretical gaps in current understanding of these issues.
3. Analyze policies and programs that respond to current SRH issues and critically appraise those responses.
4. Apply ethical, social justice, and human rights perspectives to understanding sexual and reproductive health and SRH promotion strategies.
5. Design strategies to promote sexual and reproductive health and rights on individual and community levels.

Sample Courses

Current Issues in Sexual and Reproductive Health

This course examines how current trends in public health and public policy – and the historic policies, processes, and narratives from which those trends emerge – shape health access and outcomes and drive inequities among certain populations, particularly youth, LGBTQ communities, immigrant communities, and communities of color. The course uses a systems approach, pushing students to identify and analyze the relationship between issues such as welfare policy, economic inequality, maternal mortality, and toxic stress and sexual and reproductive health.

Seminar on Sexuality, Gender, Health, and Human Rights

This seminar uses new scholarship on sexuality to engage with ongoing theoretical conversations and activism in human rights, gender, and health. Pressed by the increasing recognition of the importance of sexuality in a wide range of rights and advocacy work (for example, HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, and sexual violence), theorists and advocates alike have struggled with the complex, sometimes fluid and elusive nature of sexuality. What is this "sexuality" in need of rights and health? How does it manifest itself across a range of persons and cultures? And how can culturally and historically situated work about sexuality inform and improve legal and advocacy interventions?

Related Certificates

• Child, Youth, and Family Health
• Health and Human Rights
• Health Promotion Research and Practice