Curriculum

The 129-credit BS program in Global Public Health/Nutrition and Dietetics provides you with foundational training in current knowledge, policy, and research on food and nutrition, equipping you with key tools to enhance public health. You’ll explore areas like food production, technology, epidemiology, diet assessment, health policy, and nutrition counseling.

The curriculum for the BS, Global Public Health/Nutrition and Dietetics includes the accredited Didactic Program in Dietetics (DPD) courses needed to become a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist. Learn more about the NYU DPD.

Core Course Sequence

College Core Curriculum (CORE)

NYU’s College Core Curriculum provides a foundational academic experience of general education in the liberal arts for undergraduates at NYU. The Core Curriculum includes courses in foreign language, expository writing, and foundations of contemporary culture and scientific inquiry. In addition to these required subject areas, students also have the opportunity to explore liberal arts electives in the topics that most interest them, gaining the skills and breadth of intellectual perspective to flourish in their major programs of study and in their later careers.

Major and Co-Major Requirements

You’ll take core classes in public health, including health policy, epidemiology, and environmental health, and in nutrition and dietetics, including food science, health and nutrition, human physiology, and diet assessment. You’ll expand on these foundational courses with electives in the areas that most interest you, such as bioethics or global medicine. The program includes an internship, where you’ll apply course concepts to real-world scenarios and build professional relationships in the field.

Sample Elective Courses

Food Microbiology and Sanitation 

This course explores food safety, processing, and regulatory issues related to the role of microorganisms in food processing and preservation, as well as the use of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) to prevent contamination of food, equipment, and personnel.

Epidemiology for Global Health 

Epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of health and illness in human populations worldwide. The overall objective of this course is to introduce students to the history, principles, and methods of epidemiology in a global context. Students will also examine epidemiological theories, analytic approaches, and tools from a global health perspective. Finally, students will develop the necessary skills to critically read, interpret, and appraise published epidemiological studies and to locate, use, evaluate, and synthesize information from mass media sources.

Food and Identity  

This course focuses on how people use food to identify themselves as individuals and as groups. Students will ascertain the meaning and significance of food in different cultures by exploring the way that ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, and religion influence our food choices. In addition, they will also examine how people transmit and preserve culture using food. Through reading scholarly articles, personal essays, book excerpts, newspaper articles, cookbooks, and viewing films, students will examine the intricate relationships that people have with food. The course looks critically at the following questions: how can food have different meanings and uses for different people? How does food function both to foster community feeling and drive wedges among people? What are some prevailing academic theories that help society understand some of these patterns of identification and how do societies change over time?