MPH Master of Public Health Academics & Curriculum

The Environmental Health Concentration is designed to enable students to:

• Propose strategies in determining exposure and evaluating risk for selected occupational and environmental hazards.
• Propose engineering, educational, policy and enforcement strategies that reduce occupational and environmental exposure that improve health outcomes in selected populations.
• Critique various literature sources for communicating issues of hazards, practice-based strategies, and environmental justice and equality.
• Develop appropriate methods to identify, characterize and address environmental health issues.
• Critically assess the general mechanisms of toxicity in eliciting a toxic response to various occupational and environmental exposures.

The Epidemiology Concentration is designed to enable students to:

• Analyze the basic principles of disease transmission, prevention, and control by applying them to infectious diseases of public health importance.
• Evaluate the factors that increase or decrease the risk of chronic diseases, and analyze the methods by which these factors can be modified.
• Design an observational or experimental study to evaluate the association between an exposure and an outcome, and identify potential sources of confounding, bias, and effect measure modification.
• Formulate and implement multivariable analytic approaches that adjust for confounders and effect measure modifiers, and generate appropriate conclusions.
• Evaluate distributions of disease in terms of geography, population groups, and time, by creating maps, graphs, tables, or other forms of data visualization.

The Health Behavior Concentration is designed to enable students to:

• Apply theory to understanding and measuring the multilevel, ecological context of health behavior, focusing on social determinants of behavior and causes of inequities in individual and population health outcomes.
• Demonstrate ability to identify, plan, adapt, implement, and evaluate sustainable evidence-based health promotion and disease prevention programs
• Demonstrate ability to disseminate and communicate health promotion program methods and outcomes to scientific, practitioner, and lay communities.
• Critically examine and interpret evidence in support of health promotion programs and scientific literature to promote evidence-based public health research and practice.
• Describe the complex role of social determinants of health in health outcomes and effectiveness of health interventions and explain strategies to address health disparities in community-based public health work.

The Master of Public Health (MPH) is a career-focused, practice-based graduate degree for changemakers focused on building healthier populations. Building from a foundational understanding of public health and the public health system, the Health Management & Policy (HMP) concentration provides training in the management functions of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. Through the choice of electives, students are able to tailor their program to include training in how to develop, implement, and evaluate policy. This combination of management and policy is a critical component to a successful career in public health management.

1. Evaluate how multiple service delivery and financing systems interact in shaping health and wellbeing on a population level.
2. Apply tools associated with the management functions of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.
3. Apply approaches for measuring performance related to population health outcomes.
4. Apply appropriate methods to analyze organizational issues.
5. Apply current methods to improve organizational performance, including quality, safety, equity, and consumer experience.

• Apply epidemiological methods to the breadth of settings and situations in public health practice.
• Select quantitative and qualitative data collection methods appropriate for a given public health context.
• Analyze quantitative and qualitative data using biostatistics, informatics, computer-based programming and software, as appropriate.
• Interpret results of data analysis for public health research, policy or practice.

• Compare the organization, structure and function of health care, public health and regulatory systems across national and international settings.
• Discuss the means by which structural bias, social inequities and racism undermine health and create challenges to achieving health equity at organizational, community and societal levels.

• Assess population needs, assets and capacities that affect communities’ health.
• Apply awareness of cultural values and practices to the design or implementation of public health policies or programs.
• Design a population-based policy, program, project or intervention.
• Explain basic principles and tools of budget and resource management.
• Select methods to evaluate public health programs.

• Discuss multiple dimensions of the policy-making process, including the roles of ethics and evidence.
• Propose strategies to identify stakeholders and build coalitions and partnerships for influencing public health outcomes.
• Advocate for political, social or economic policies and programs that will improve health in diverse populations.
• Evaluate policies for their impact on public health and health equity.

• Apply principles of leadership, governance and management, which include creating a vision, empowering others, fostering collaboration and guiding decision making.
• Apply negotiation and mediation skills to address organizational or community challenges.

• Select communication strategies for different audiences and sectors.
• Communicate audience-appropriate public health content, both in writing and through oral presentation.
• Describe the importance of cultural competence in communicating public health content.

• Perform effectively on Interprofessional teams.

• Apply systems thinking tools to a public health issue.