Sexuality, Sexual and Reproductive Health

Sexuality encompasses diverse behaviors and meanings that are shaped by individual, social, cultural, and historical factors. From the local to the global, a significant number of public health challenges involve sexual and reproductive health: HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections, unintended pregnancies, access to family planning services, sex education, maternal mortality, sexual violence, and discrimination against/stigmatization of sexually non-conforming individuals. Promoting sexual and reproductive rights and agency, as well as respect for the dignity, equality, and rights of all persons, are also public health issues.

The Certificate in Sexuality, Sexual and Reproductive Health approaches sexual and reproductive health as states of physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being. The curriculum explores and challenges the social inequalities that have had profound effects on sexuality and health. Students can specialize as researchers or practitioners, and emerge prepared to work in agencies and organizations involved in programmatic or advocacy work, policy or evaluation research, or in direct service delivery.

Admissions Eligibility

Sexuality, Sexual, and Reproductive Health is open to Columbia MPH students in the following departments:

The Competencies for this Certificate are as follows:

Explain the strengths and limitations of relevant social and behavioral scientific theories of sexuality and sexual and reproductive health (SRH), and apply them to research, policy, and programs.
Analyze major sexual and reproductive health issues in a manner that reflects an understanding of empirical, methodological, and theoretical gaps in current understanding of these issues.
Analyze policies and programs that respond to current SRH issues and critically appraise those responses.
Apply ethical, social justice, and human rights perspectives to understanding sexuality and health, as well as in designing, implementing, and evaluating SRH promotion strategies.
Design and implement strategies to promote sexual and reproductive health and rights on individual and community levels.

Learn More

Visit the Certificates Database to learn more about core and credit requirements.

Sample Courses

Current Issues in Sexual and Reproductive Health

This course examines how current trends in public health and public policy – and the historic policies, processes, and narratives from which those trends emerge – shape health access and outcomes and drive inequities among certain populations, particularly youth, LGBTQ communities, immigrant communities and communities of color. The course uses a systems approach, pushing students to identify and analyze the relationship between issues such as welfare policy, economic inequality, maternal mortality and toxic stress and sexual and reproductive health. The class better equips students to understand, analyze and intervene in systems of oppression and inequality in order to advance equity for all people.

Seminar on Sexuality, Gender, Health, and Human Rights

This seminar uses new scholarship on sexuality to engage with ongoing theoretical conversations and activism in human rights, gender, and health. Pressed by the increasing recognition of the importance of sexuality in a wide range of rights and advocacy work (for example, HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, and sexual violence), theorists and advocates alike have struggled with the complex, sometimes fluid and elusive nature of sexuality. What is this "sexuality" in need of rights and health? How does it manifest itself across a range of persons and cultures? And how can culturally and historically situated work about sexuality inform and improve legal and advocacy interventions? The seminar also turns a critical eye on recent scholarship, in light of current issues raised by policy interventions and advocacy in many countries and cultures. Finally, the seminar aims to promote dialogue and exchange between academic, activist, and advocacy work.

Master of Public Health