Public Health (MPHN)

This course provides an introduction to the multidisciplinary field of public health. Students will learn the history, core functions, and roles of the US public health system through grounding in the 12 foundational public health knowledge areas.

This course provides students with basic concepts and fundamental methods in biostatistics to investigate and evaluate public health issues. Students will utilize statistical software to perform data analysis and make informed decisions from real data collected from public health studies. This process includes data exploration, review of underlying statistical assumptions, summary and analysis of data using common descriptive and inferential statistical methods, interpretation of the statistical results, and finally preparation of a statistical report.

This course provides an introduction to 21st century environmental health science and practice. In addition to covering foundational environmental issues affecting people's health, the class familiarizes students with contemporary environmental health challenges such as climate change, sea level rise, antibiotic resistance, food and sustainability, plastics and environmental health, disaster preparedness, lead poisoning, radiation safety and health, environmental justice, cultural competence, and environmental risk communication.

This course reviews and critiques psychological, social, and cultural concepts and models relevant to health and disease in society. Students will learn how to select and apply appropriate social and behavioral models to the design of public health interventions and policies. Existing social inequalities in health status related to race, social class, and gender.

This course will introduce the principles and basic methods of epidemiology for applications in public health. These include measures of disease frequency and association, study design, sources of errors in epidemiological studies, validity and reliability of diagnostic and screening tests, causation, and outbreak investigations.

Public health professionals require skills to identify problems that face population groups, and to delineate ways to solve them. Often this necessitates conducting small- or large-scale investigations on their own, or as a member of a project team. The goal of this course is to provide practical, step-by-step guidance to the research process in public health.

This course provides graduate students with an introduction to the intersection between public health and health equity. Studies will conduct an in-depth examination and discussion of theories of social justice (including health equity) and determinants of health and research, advocacy and other approaches for addressing social injustices intertwined with public health inequities and promoting justice and equity.

This course introduces students to the concepts and methods of community health improvement and the role of assessment. Learning and skill development will focus on important community health topics, including systems thinking that leads to coordination of health care and public health activities to achieve community health goals; the nature of health and its determinants; the use of quantitative and qualitative methods; data analysis; community mobilization and capacity building; the impact of current national policy on community health improvement; and the application of social justice or health principles.

This course introduces students to public health informatics, the systematic application of information, computer science and technology to public health practice, research and learning. Students will learn how to think critically about population level data and based on an understanding of informatics approaches address pressing public health issues, such as the integration of comprehensive care services for vulnerable populations, engaging populations in health behaviors using information technologies, health surveillance, management of very large data sets across the health system, comparative effectiveness analysis and appropriate use of population health data analytics to influence public health programs and policies.

This course focuses on the practice of leadership in public health settings. Leadership theory and research will provide a foundation for identifying common attributes and behaviors of effective leaders; understanding how to apply common leadership practice to a variety of situations; and assessing strategies leaders use to remain flexible and adapt to changing circumstances. This course will also focus on how public health leaders can influence organizational and community priorities, goals and activities and address and promote public health equity.

The Public Health Practicum requires students to integrate and synthesize knowledge and skills through the application of public health theories and principles to the development and implementation of a special project in a selected domain of professional public health practice. This course provides students with an in-depth supervised experience in an approved organization and an opportunity to integrate perspectives from other sectors and/or professions.

This course provides an overview of theories, principles and strategies associated with Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR). This introductory course is intended for graduate students interested in adding CBPR to their toolkit of effective approaches for understanding and addressing social and health inequities in public health. This course is not a methodology course. CBPR is an approach to conducting research that is amenable to a variety of research designs and methodologies.