Courses

Open only to students in the MSPP program. Communication Skills for Policy Analysts is a seminar course that simulates a fast-paced public policy environment where different stakeholders require a constant flow of written and oral communication work products. Each work product assignment will be treated as a case with a specific audience, background information and real-world situation and will require outside research and collaboration. MS in Public Policy students will draw on knowledge and techniques being learned in their other Fall coursework.

Traditionally, governments have the ultimate responsibility for assuring the conditions for their people to be as healthy as they can be. In this sense one of the fundamental societal goals of health services may be considered the health improvement of the population served and for which the individual government is responsible. As our understanding of the multiple determinants of health has dramatically expanded, exercising this responsibility calls for a national health policy that goes beyond planning for the personal health care system and addresses the health of communities.

This course describes the growing involvement of government in stimulating and directing the development of information technology in healthcare organizations. Included is a discussion of attempts to exchange information for the purposes of improving the quality of personal healthcare and public health. Methods for determining the financial value of information technology are described. Techniques for insuring the security and privacy of health information are presented.

Advanced Health Care Payment Systems is designed to familiarize students with the various health care payment systems that are used by various healthcare payers. The course focuses on Medicare's prospective payment systems for hospital and other provider type reimbursement. It also covers New York State Medicaid reimbursement issues and provides a general understanding of the healthcare charge structure. The course will also focus on the fundamentals of establishing a compliance program to identify and prevent fraud and abuse issues.

What would the best healthcare system look like? How would you know it is the best? What systems in wealthy nations today come close to matching this ideal? We begin this class with short documentary films that cover some of issues raised by these questions. We read and discuss articles about conventional health system models around the world and alternative perspectives for studying them and evaluating their performance. We discuss how so much of the literature draws on selective evidence to evaluate health care systems in the U.S. and abroad.

Couples with CAP-GP.3149.

Continuation of CAP-GP.3226.

Continuation CAP-GP.3148. As part of the core curriculum of the NYU Wagner Masters program, Capstone teams spend an academic year conducting research on a pressing social question. Wagner's Capstone program provides students with a centerpiece of their graduate experience in which they are able to experience first-hand the full research experience.

Couples with CAP-GP.3227.

Couples with CAP-GP.3602.

Continuation of CAP-GP.3601.

The Wagner School Summer Institute brings together faculty and students from the United States and other parts of the world for an on-site exploration of international health policy and prospects in Geneva, Switzerland.

This course incorporates topics of planning and financial decision making as applied to health-care organizations. This course will cover two main topics:
-Financial analysis both as a proactive exercise and a tool for organizational control.
-Issues of budgeting, cost determination, pricing and rate setting in a healthcare environment.

This course will explore the role of ethics in management leadership and organization success in today’s health care environment. Learning objectives include:

The course incorporates topics of capital planning and other finance issues making as applied to health-care organizations. This course will cover three main topics:
-Public payer rate setting
-Understanding risk and the costs of capital in making financial decisions.
-Issues in working capital and investment management activities of healthcare organizations.

1.5-3 credits. An independent reading must be proposed to, and approved and supervised by a full-time faculty member. Professors are not required to take on any student for an independent reading and may be more inclined in cases where the student defines her or his interest in a subject fairly precisely. Students must submit a reading list and agree to specific due dates for assignments with the faculty member supervising the independent reading.

This short, non-credit class aims to give students an overview of the key elements of successful writing, and equip them with the tools to approach any writing assignment, from memos to emails to reports to research briefs. This class is designed to be a companion piece to other coursework, and students will be asked to bring in assignments from other courses to work on in class. Topics covered include introductions, structure and organization, paragraphs and

This is an interactive 90-minute introduction to writing, citing, and integrating sources in graduate essays. Although we will cover various citation methods, including MLA and Chicago, we will focus on APA Style. Students will gain practice in citing scholarly and popular sources in text and in the Works Cited page of projects and will develop skill incorporating articles into their own prose. In addition to integrating sources, this workshop is also a brief introduction to NYU library resources and services available to Wagner students.

Many developing countries have been significantly reforming the scope and organization of the public sector in recent years. This course critically examines the changing structures and operations of government fiscal systems in developing countries, with particular emphasis on the growing trend to strengthen sub-national levels.

The purpose of the course is to deepen students’ understanding of the way in which public policy and political realities interact in American government at the national, state, and local levels: how political pressures limit policy choices, how policy choices in turn reshape politics, and how policymakers can function in the interplay of competing forces. The theme explored is how public officials balance concerns for substantive policy objectives, institutional politics and elective politics in order to achieve change.

This course examines the nature and extent of poverty primarily in the U.S. but with a comparative perspective (developed countries in Europe). To start, this course will focus on how poverty is defined and measured. It will proceed to explore how conceptions of poverty are socially constructed and historically bounded; examine what the causes and consequences of poverty are and discuss how these are complex and interwoven; and show how people can experience poverty at different points in their life course—some groups experiencing poverty more so than others.

This is an advanced course for students who plan to become policy analysts.  Students (a) extend their familiarity with methodologic issues, including research designs, measurement problems, and analytic approaches; (b) get hands-on experience with management, analysis, and presentation of data; and (c) develop skills in reading, critiquing, and reporting on policy-relevant research.

Reforming education policy and finance are at the center of intense debates at all levels of government, driven in part by the recognition of the central role that education plays in the economy. Education affects the productivity of the labor force, the distribution of income, economic growth, and individuals’ earnings and quality of life. This course uses economic principles to analyze K-12 education. The course begins with an examination of the demand for education, both by the private sector (particularly individuals) and the public sector.

Though the policymaking process is complex, with a host of actors and competing interests, public policy is traditionally shaped by elected officials, administrative agencies, and organized interest groups. There are many avenues for policies to be informed by the lived experience of members of low-income and marginalized communities; however, their participation is often hidden and/or undervalued.