Posted by anderc8 on Tuesday, January 3, 2017 in News, The Nation's Health.

Written by Vanderbilt MHS Professor Tara McKay

Gilbert and I arrived at Vanderbilt in 2015, and over the past 18 months we have pushed each other to become the interdisciplinary scholar and teacher that we both want to be. To this end, we have collaborated on multiple grant proposals including a recently funded award led by Kitt Carpenter (Economics) from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study LGBT policies and health in the US. We have guest lectured in each other’s classes. We are writing together, and now teaching together in ways that we hope will bring elements of the social sciences (my background) in conversation with health policy and health services research (Gilbert’s background).

Prior to joining the faculty at Vanderbilt, both of us also had independent interests in enhancing the classroom experience through engagement with real people and application to real policy issues. So, when VU introduced the University Courses program, we jumped at the opportunity to develop an immersive course that could highlight our mutual interests and shared passions through trans-institutional learning. Via site visits, assignments that tackle contemporary policy issues, and several guest speakers, “The Nation’s Health: From Policy to Practice” will deliver our students (both undergraduate and graduate) an experience that they would be unable to find elsewhere here at Vanderbilt.

The idea of teaching a class focused on health policy and advocacy seems even more relevant today than it did when we originally pitched the idea because of the current climate that exists in our country and, more specifically, our state. Throughout 2016, Tennessee has been trying to find a path forward for covering the state’s low income uninsured population. Many in this population would have been covered if the state had expanded Medicaid along with the 31 other states that did so through the Affordable Care Act. Without this expansion, however, Tennessee has had to figure out on its own whether and how to continue to support all of its citizens. With talk of the ACA being repealed in part or in full by the Trump administration, this conversation will no doubt become even more important in national health policy and politics as we try to navigate a way forward.

Teaching at Vanderbilt, located in Tennessee’s capital city of Nashville, offers us so many incredible opportunities to get out of the classroom and engage with health policy leaders on the state and local levels. During the Spring 2017 semester, students from all corners of campus will come together and become fully immersed in the health policy environment and will critically address generally accepted ideas about health. Through its explicit interdisciplinary design, the course will bring together studies of the policy process at multiple levels of government with social science on health disparities, policy advocacy, and health social movements. Students will learn how to engage state legislators and popular audiences through the creation of policy briefs and op-eds. Students will also visit the Tennessee State Capitol for a “day on the hill,” which will include visits with state legislators, representatives of the governor’s office and bureaucrats working in the state health department.

Students will be posting blogs and sharing photos reacting to site visits and guest speakers regularly throughout the semester, and we invite you to return to this webpage often to actively engage with us by posting comments.