We made inquiries with domestic and international colleagues and identified three exemplary examples of public health education that offer a critical political economy approach. There are the Master’s and Post-Graduate Public Health Program at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain (2023a), the Master’s and Postgraduate Diploma of Public Health Programs at Newcastle University, UK (2023), and the MA and PhD Graduate Program in Health Policy and Equity at York University in Toronto (2023). The flagship course at Universitat Pompeu Fabra Health and Society states (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2023B): 

According to the currently dominant biomedical approach, the main “culprits” in the production of diseases and health are biological and genetic agents, individual habits harmful to health, and deficiencies in access and use of health services. However, the available scientific knowledge has shown how these causes have a smaller impact on population health than it may seem. Firstly, because they are proximal or “final” causes originated, in constant interaction with other more distal causes, by social determinants such as poverty, employment conditions, housing, education, psychosocial factors, or support. family or community. Second, because these social determinants are in turn produced, or strongly influenced, by political causes originating in the very unequal power relations existing in each society according to “axes” related to social class, gender, ethnicity, immigration and territory. 

Newcastle’s Advanced Social Determinants of Health course (Newcastle University, 2023b) and Public Policy, Health and Health Inequalities course (Newcastle, 2023c) provide a critical political economy analysis to contemporary health issues. Finally, the Health Policy and Equity Program at York University (2023a) offers both a Political Economy of Health Inequalities course and a Health Equity Analytic Orientations course among others taught through a political economy perspective (York University, 2023b). 

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