This course centers on context for actions residents and policy makers can take to help their communities become healthier, and more flexible and creative in response to change. We will draw on ideas and techniques from the field of public health as we learn about resilience, policy process, and related public health efforts in Washington State and Thurston County. Course participants will also consider the effects of income and wealth inequity on a community’s health and resilience.

“Resilience” is often thought of as one person’s reaction to natural disaster or personal tragedy. But shared responses to social and environmental change are equally vital to both individual and collective well-being. Public health professionals focus efforts on fostering wellness in entire groups and populations of people, in addition to working with partners in medical care.

Written assignments in Vital Signs will include several short discussion papers to be shared with other participants. As the quarter progresses, this writing will build into an exploratory project on a topic of each student’s choice, based in course readings. Development and use of effective writing, reading and thinking skills will be a major course emphasis. Credit will be awarded in Public Health: Community Resilience or Public Health: Social Policy, depending on the focus of the final project.

This course may be taken alone. It is informally linked (with minimal overlap of content) to Community Resilience: An Introduction to Public Policy, another four-credit course also taught on Saturdays by the same faculty. Students enrolled in both courses may choose to complete separate final projects on different topics, or to combine their projects into a single exploratory paper on a topic related to policy and health, accompanied by a short presentation of their work in Community Resilience: An Introduction to Public Policy.