Health Systems Science: Measuring What Matters For Change

Physicians can and should be leaders in changing our health care systems for the better. To make our institutions more equitable, more efficient, and serve patients with the best of medical knowledge, we must use the same effective scientific methods to guide our work as we do in other fields of inquiry. That is health systems science. In this course students will learn the basics of methods needed for studying health systems: health services research and economics, implementation/ delivery science, quality improvement. Students will learn to distinguish key categories of outcomes: clinical (e.g. mortality) health services (e.g. access, quality, cost, provider wellness) and implementation: (e.g. acceptability, adoption, appropriateness, fidelity, reach).