Hy Huynh, center, explains a socio-ecological model to first-year students as co-instructor Chris Beyrer, right, looks on during a lecture in their global health Focus course.
Published October 2, 2024 under Education News
On a Wednesday afternoon in a Trent Hall classroom, DGHI Director Chris Beyrer, M.D., and assistant professor Hy Huynh, Ph.D., are leading a discussion with 10 first-year students. The topic is teeth.
“Missing teeth or crooked teeth can marginalize you on what kind of job you can get,” Beyrer explains. “If you get a job, but with no dental benefits, you pay out of pocket. Sometimes, that’s how people end up with dentures [at a young age] because they can only afford extractions.”
The discussion, sparked by a case study that involved lack of access to health insurance, is an example of the topics that come up in Global Health & Human Rights of Sexual Gender Diverse People, one of the interdisciplinary seminars for first-year students taught through Duke’s Focus program. The course explores how the multilayered social, legal and economic inequities experienced by sexual and gender minorities around the world affect their health.
The course also marks new ground for Beyrer, who co-teaches it with Huynh, an assistant professor of the practice of global health and public policy. It’s Beyrer’s first Duke course since joining the institute in 2022, and the first time he has taught first-year students.
“I hope they come away with an understanding that global health includes the health of those underserved in the U.S. and everywhere and become empowered, educated global health citizens,” says Beyrer, an infectious disease epidemiologist with an expertise in human rights. “I have taught for many years, but this is the first time global health, human rights and sexually diverse gender populations have come together.”
The course is one of four seminars in the Focus program’s Global Health: Problems and Paradigms cluster. Offered by the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, the Focus program allows first-year students to learn about a discipline through small classes organized around a central theme. Students share campus housing to extend the learning experience.
Huynh, a community psychologist who uses they/them pronouns, says the course explores topics they weren’t discussing at 18-years-old. They meet with the students weekly for dinner on East Campus to deepen rapport outside the classroom.
“I imagine my role as being a facilitator of knowledge and information that leads to a process of critical consciousness,” says Huynh, a researcher with the Center for Health Policy & Inequalities Research and Duke’s Sexual and Gender Minority Wellness Program. “In best cases, I want to create a lasting impulse for students to question power, privilege and oppression and work towards a more equitable world for all minoritized communities and populations.”
The Focus program has long been a pillar of global health education on campus. Sherryl Broverman, Ph.D., a professor of the practice of biology and global health, launched the first global health Focus course in 2006, the same year the institute was founded, and has served as faculty director of the global health cluster since its inception.
The courses offered by DGHI have varied through the years, exploring issues such as the biological impact of racism on African Americans and the intersection of engineering and health. Eric Green, Ph.D., DGHI’s director of undergraduate studies, says the first-year courses can offer a powerful introduction to the interdisciplinary nature of global health.
“They leave [Focus] being better informed about the world, and what they can do,” says Green, who taught a Focus course on health innovation in low-income settings in 2013. “It sets them up for their time at Duke to be curious and take a smaller world view and make it bigger.”
Starting in fall 2025, the global health Focus cluster will also count toward a key part of the new undergraduate curriculum requirements adopted by Trinity College. All first-year students will participate in Duke Constellations, a set of three interconnected courses that will emphasize experiential and interdisciplinary learning.
Green sees Constellations as a new way to introduce students to global health and help them find a path in the field. He hopes students who use global health Focus courses to meet Constellation requirements will ultimately choose to pursue a global health co-major or minor.
“Every first-year student is going to be looking for an experience, and we want our Focus cluster to be at the top of their list,” he says. “Focus is different from any other program at Duke. I’m excited to make our cluster a key piece of our undergraduate studies offering.”
