2025-2026 Academic Catalog

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Integrated Health Studies Option, BA - Individually Designed Major

General Requirements

To earn a degree, students must satisfy all requirements in each of the areas below, in addition to their individually designed requirements.

Program Requirements

The IDM program plan must comply with the following policies:

  1. Students must complete a minimum of 39 credit hours from the approved courses.
  2. Students must complete a minimum of nine upper-division (3000-level and above) credit hours in the approved cluster area and must complete all of the upper-division requirements for the minor or certificate they choose to pair with the cluster.
  3. Students must earn a minimum grade of C- (1.7) in all courses that apply to the major and must achieve a minimum cumulative major GPA of 2.0. Courses taken using P+/P/F or S/U grading cannot apply to major requirements.
  4. Students must complete a minimum of 15 credit hours with CU Denver faculty from the approved cluster area and must complete all of the residency requirements for the minor or certificate they choose to pair with the cluster.

Program Restrictions, Allowances and Recommendations

  1. Students combine one of the identified CLAS minors or certificates with one of the topical clusters to make up their major areas. Students will earn the minor/ certificate they use to form a cluster for their major, as long as they have completed all of the requirements for that program. 
  2. Students can double-count a maximum of one course across their areas (in addition to an introductory course).
  3. Students must take courses from at least two different disciplines in their topical cluster.
  4. Students are required to take two courses as an introduction to their major. If an introductory course is also part of a student's topical cluster, a student may count one introductory course as part of that area's credits.
  5. Note: Some courses in each cluster require prerequisites that must be met making them a 21 credit cluster. Please see course descriptions.
Complete the following program requirements:
Complete two of the following courses: 16
Introduction to Health Communication
Foundations of Health Humanities
Introduction to Public Health
Medical Sociology
Complete one approved CLAS minor or certificate:15
Complete a minimum of 15 credit hours, with nine at the upper division level, in at least one approved topical cluster:15
Complete the Interdisciplinary Studies Capstone Course. 23
Interdisciplinary Studies Capstone
Total Hours39
1

If an introductory course is also part of a student's chosen area, a student may count one introductory course as part of that area's credits.

2

Taken toward the end of your career (junior/senior year.)

Public Health Minor

The undergraduate minor in Public Health is designed to provide students with a basic understanding of the social, cultural, and biological dimensions of health. The minor curriculum provides students with the intellectual and methodological tools needed to understand the joint bio-cultural determinants and contexts of health, health care and public health. 

Health Humanities Minor

The Health Humanities minor critically analyzes historical and contemporary connections among health, medicine, and society. The minor deepens understandings of disease and wellness, pain and suffering, personhood, the nature of death and dying, embodied experience, and the limits of technological knowledge. Students explore the human dimensions of medical practice and how they interact with lived experience. 

Health Communication Undergraduate Certificate

The Health Communication Undergraduate Certificate seeks to impart the knowledge and skills necessary for creating, analyzing, and assessing health communications in a diverse and global world, where health occupies an increasingly prominent portion of our public life. This certificate provides students with a theoretically rich and practically relevant education in how health messages are generated, negotiated, and understood. 

Community Health and Medicine Undergraduate Certificate

The Community Health and Medicine Undergraduate Certificate provides training in the core research methodologies and theories of medical sociology, examining individual experience, institutional structures, laws and policies that affect health, and broader systems of inequality that lead to unequal rates of illness and access to care. 

Aging and End of Life Cluster

The Aging and End of Life Cluster is designed for students to learn about the range of human experiences with aging and dying, and to understand how the medical considerations of aging and the end of life intersect with social, ethical, policy, and religious questions.

Anthropology of Death
Families in Later Life
Design for Healthful Human Longevity
Live Long and Prosper: Public Health & Aging
Philosophy of Death and Dying
Lifespan Developmental Psychology for Health Majors
Aging, Brain and Behavior
Death and Concepts of Afterlife
Death & Dying: Social & Medical Perspectives
Sociology of Adulthood and Aging

Biology and Society Cluster

This area examines the ways biology interacts with everyday life. Students will learn about the reciprocal relationships between biology and society, including themes of health and disease, the environment, evolution, ethics, and behavioral choices about health.

Medical Anthropology
Behavioral Genetics
Medicine, Health Care, and Justice: Bioethics
Biological Basis of Behavior
Health Psychology
Hormones and Behavior
Developmental Neuroscience
Neuropsychology
Population Change and Analysis

Note: If students choose multiple upper division PSYC courses, they will need to add the introductory prerequisites, for a total for 21 credits for the cluster.

Environmental Health Cluster

This area focuses on the relationships between people and their environments. Students will learn about how both natural and built environments impact human health and disease, and how ecological balances are important to maintaining human health.

ANTH 3316
Course ANTH 3316 Not Found
General Microbiology
and General Microbiology Lab
Infectious Disease Ecology
Conservation Biology
Applied Microbial Ecology
Environmental Toxicology
Environment, Society and Sustainability
Climate Change: Causes, Impacts and Solutions
Geography of Food and Agriculture
Geography of Health
Earth Environments and Human Impacts
Environment and Society in the American Past
Disasters, Climate Change, and Health
Introduction to Environmental Health

Note: If students choose multiple upper division BIOL courses, they will need to add the introductory prerequisites, for a total for 21 credits for the cluster.

Drugs and Addiction Cluster

This area considers the characteristics of addiction and how drugs work. Students will have the opportunity to study drugs and addiction from a variety of perspectives to better understand how individuals experience addiction and how society approaches policies and treatments regarding drugs and addiction.

Cannabis Culture
Psychedelic Anthropology
Economics of Sex and Drugs
Drugs, Brain and Behavior
Drugs, Alcohol & Society

Family Health Issues Cluster

This area explores families as locations of health and well-being, on the one hand, and sources of health problems and crises, on the other. Students will learn about the relationships between family health and community health, as well as individual health and family health.

Family Communication
Love, Couples and Family
Mental Illness and Society
Public Health Perspectives On Family Violence
Family Psychology
Psychology of Women
Sociology of Human Sexuality
Families and Society
Social Meanings of Reproduction
Sociology of Childhood and Adolescence
Sociology of Adulthood and Aging
Violence in Relationships

Note: If students choose multiple PSYC courses, they will need to add the introductory prerequisites, for a total for 21 credits for the cluster.

Food and Nutrition Cluster

This area considers relationships between nutrition and overall health and well-being. Students will connect food to issues of sustainability and communication, understand obstacles to healthy eating, and learn about global issues of nutrition.

Nutritional Chemistry
You Are What You Eat: Food as Communication
Geography of Food and Agriculture
Sustainable Urban Agriculture Field Study I
Food Justice in City & Schools

Sexuality and Reproduction Cluster

This area examines sexuality and reproduction at both micro and macro levels, from the anatomy of the human body and the psychology of mind to the history of multiple societies and clusters. Students will learn how assumptions about gender and sex inform the science of sexuality and reproduction, and health impacts that derive from these relationships.

Human Reproductive Ecology
Human Reproductive Biology
History of Sexuality
Gender, Science, and Medicine: 1600 to the Present
Human Sexuality and Public Health
Global Topics In Sexual and Reproductive Health
Human Sexuality
Sociology of Human Sexuality
Sex and Gender
Population Change and Analysis
Social Meanings of Reproduction

To learn more about the Student Learning Outcomes for this program, please visit our website. 

To review the Degree Map for this program, please visit our website