By Elizabeth Horwitz (MPA ’23)

After Columbia lifted the indoor mask requirement on March 14, many SIPA students have chosen to stop wearing masks in line with CDC and Columbia guidelines. This means you may be seeing a whole new side to your peers: a lab partner with a hidden mustache, perhaps? Culture shock at the sight of lips wearing lipstick?

Just two months ago, the spring semester began remotely amidst the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. There was immense uncertainty about what would come next, and we looked to our academic and government leaders for guidance.

Public health decisions are a key facet of every institution's policy choices. These choices have ripple effects that can change a life, a community, or the course of history. We’ve seen this with COVID-19 and the health policy choices that governments have made to protect the safety of their citizens. We saw this when President Obama passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, providing access to care for millions that previously had gone without. Upon signing, Obama said, “We finally declared that in America, health care is not a privilege for a few, but a right for all.”

While no one doubts the important role that health policy plays in our society, SIPA is currently failing to provide its students access to health policy coursework or opportunities to lay the intellectual framework necessary to solve public health and policy challenges.

According to SIPA’s website, the school's mission is “to support the global public interest by educating students to serve and to lead, and to produce and share new knowledge on the critical public policy challenges facing the global community.” As we enter the second year of a global pandemic, it’s hard to imagine that “critical policy challenges” don’t at least in part refer to health policy challenges.

Yet, for the spring 2022 semester, SIPA did not offer a single course focusing on health policy. For fall 2021, there was only one global health policy course offered at SIPA. It is a shocking truth, especially as we continue to face one of the biggest global health crises of the modern era.

Something students often hear when asking about health policy coursework, is that Columbia boasts an incredible public health school, and that there are opportunities for students to take classes there. While this is true, it’s not that simple. The process to cross-register can be quite cumbersome, often requiring SIPA students to wait until after public health students have registered, which severely limits the number of accessible seats. But even if the cross-registration process were easier, it wouldn’t address the underlying problem with the way that SIPA creates its course catalog. Health policy, especially now, is deeply interwoven into the nature of solving nearly all public policy challenges, and SIPA is doing its students a disservice by not providing opportunities to engage with the policy world in this way.

Last month, I created a Google Forms survey and asked SIPA students about their interest in health policy as an academic area, career field, and the type of health policy coursework that would interest them. Of the 56 responses from SIPA students, 57% of students selected that they were either very likely or pretty likely to take a health policy course if it was offered.

Furthermore, students have diverse health policy coursework interests. Urban policy and health was the most popular topic, selected by 46% of respondents. Tied for second were environment/climate and health, as well as global health, with 39% each.

Responses truncated above include industrial organization of the health industry; gender health, reproduction, and comparative health policy; healthcare in emergency/humanitarian setting/connection between trade agreements and healthcare; very interested in healthcare re: cost minimization; rural health interventions in international development, and transitioning away from a career in nutrition and health policy.

When students were asked if they had any additional comments, one student responded, “I think it’s crazy these classes aren’t options — I’m in an education policy class now, which even though it isn’t my focus area, I’m learning so much! Same could be said for health policy.”

Another student wrote, “This is an important field that should be included in the range of courses on offer — particularly for students studying international and public affairs.”

Over 94% of respondents have not taken any health policy courses at SIPA.

How will SIPA students be able to tackle solving policy challenges without a baseline understanding of health policy? Our policy institutions have made it clear that health policy is of the utmost importance. For example, the United States budget’s largest expenditure is in health and human services. The World Health Organization spends nearly $6 billion and partners with 194 member states with the aim to “ensure that a billion more people have universal health coverage, to protect a billion more people from health emergencies, and provide a further billion people with better health and well-being.”

Whether you are trying to stop a pandemic, create a more sustainable city, build a new school, or advance national security, there are always health policy considerations that must be weighed.

Let’s give SIPA students the opportunity to have a voice in these conversations. There is a rich diversity of health policy faculty and leadership that could offer SIPA students unique perspectives on the intersection of health policy and social challenges. Whether it’s global health, environmental health, or health insurance, we need policy students on the frontlines, equipped with the tools to ensure our societies become a healthier and more equitable place for all.

Elizabeth Horwitz is pursuing an MPA from SIPA, with a concentration in Urban and Social Policy and a specialization in the United States. With a professional background in client services and operations, she hopes to transition to a policy career focused on improving social policy outcomes in the United States.

OPINION: SIPA’s shocking shortage of health policy courses