areas of public health knowledge.
The MPH program provides inter-professional education and training in public health concepts targeted to working health professionals and traditional students alike. It provides a practice- oriented program for students in all of the health professions who want to strengthen general knowledge and skills in public health. The MPH program requires students to complete six
required courses, 2 required 1-credit seminars, one 3-credit methods course, chosen from a list of 10 Curriculum Committee-approved courses, and the 6-credit field experience for a total of 29 credits out of a total of 42 credits. The remaining credits are taken as electives, chosen from across the University’s schools and programs. Five of the MPH program’s 6 required courses address the 5 core areas of knowledge basic to public health. The sixth required course provides an overview of the core functions of public health and introduces the students to cross-cutting competencies such as public health communications, diversity and culture, leadership, program planning, and systems thinking. Beyond the MPH program’s mission and goals, the Association of Schools of Public Health’s (ASPH) MPH Core Competency Model guides the curriculum content. MPH students who receive a passing grade of “B” or above in the 6 required courses and one methods course are considered to have demonstrated an understanding of the public health core knowledge.
The MPH program’s required courses, the core area associated with the course, and the number of credits associated with each course are included in the table below. Specific course
descriptions for these courses are also shown after the table. All course syllabi will be available during the site visit.
Table 20. MPH Program Required Courses
MPH Program’s Required Courses PH Core Area Credits
POP HLTH 780: Public Health: Principles and Practice Cross-cutting competencies 3
POP HLTH 797: Introduction to Epidemiology Epidemiology 3
BMI 511: Introduction to Biostatistical Methods for Public Health
Biostatistics 3
POP HLTH 785: Health Systems, Management and Policy Health Services Administration 3 POP HLTH 650-063: Principles of Environmental Health for
Public Health Practice
Environmental Health Sciences 3
POP HLTH 786: Social and Behavioral Sciences for Public Health
Social and Behavioral Health Sciences
3 POP HLTH 781: Introduction to Public Health Seminar Cross-cutting competencies 1 POP HLTH 787: Field Work Seminar Cross-cutting competencies 1
POP PLTH 788: Public Health Field Work Core and cross-cutting competencies
6
Total 26
2.3.a. Identification of the means by which the program assures that all graduate professional public health degree students have fundamental competence in the areas of knowledge basic to public health. If this means is common across the program, it need be described only once. If it varies by degree or specialty area, sufficient information must be provided to assess compliance by each. See CEPH Data Template 2.3.1.
Biostatistics and Medical Informatics 511: Introduction to Biostatistical Methods for Public
Health (Instructor-Ismor Fischer): This 3-credit course is designed to provide breadth in
biostatistical methods for public health practitioners and will cover the areas of knowledge basic to public health. The course equips students with the skills to assess the methods used in public health research studies and the results reported in the literature in terms of its statistical content and to critically evaluate the conclusions. Topics include descriptive statistics in tables and graphs, and biostatistical methods for summary measures, probability and distributions, sampling distributions, statistical inference, hypothesis testing and statistical comparison, non-parametrics, correlation, regression analysis for various types of data, and survey sampling. These topics will be reinforced with examples drawn from recent public health literature.
Population Health Sciences 797: Introduction to Epidemiology (Instructor-Hal Skinner): This 3-credit course is designed to teach the fundamentals of conducting rigorous epidemiologic research. The course also aims to help students understand and evaluate epidemiologic research conducted by others. This course provides foundation skills relevant to population science, which includes public health practice, health policy, and clinical medicine. Population Health Sciences 780: Public Health Principles and Practice (Course Director, Mark Edgar
and Co-instructor, Patrick Remington): This 3-credit course is designed to teach students
about what public health is, and how it works. This course highlights strategies that can be used to improve the health of the public. In contrast to clinical medicine, public health focuses on populations, and strategies that can be used to promote health and prevent disease. The course takes a “hands-on” approach, using problem-based learning through lectures and small group discussions.
Population Health Sciences 781: Introduction to Public Health Seminar (Fall 2013 Instructors:
Barbara Duerst, Mary Hayney, Charles Brokopp): This 1-credit, student-led seminar is
designed to advance MPH students’ analytic assessment, communication, leadership and systems thinking skills. Enrolled students prepare and lead discussions about current public health practice or policy related research, a national, state, or local program or issue or a case study.
Population Health Sciences 650-063: Principles of Environmental Health for Public Health
Practice (Instructor-Delores Severtson): This 3-credit course is designed to provide
undergraduate, public health and other graduate students a broad overview of environmental health as a public health discipline. The course focuses on environmental health and its’ history, US and world health status and issues, public health research methodologies, crucial infectious and non-infectious disease principles and all crucial environmental health topics necessary to get an overall understanding of the field.
Population Health Sciences 785: Health Systems, Management, and Policy (Instructor-
Thomas Oliver): This 3-credit course is designed to introduce students from multiple disciplines
to the fundamental characteristics of health care systems; the role of prevention and other non- medical factors in population health outcomes; the organization, financing, and delivery of services in the US health care system; key management challenges in private and public health care organizations; and the process of public policy development and key issues in contemporary health policy.
Population Health Sciences 786: Social and Behavioral Sciences for Public Health
(Instructor- Ana Martinez-Donate): This course is designed to allow students the ability to
analyze public health issues from a social and behavioral sciences perspective, and critically examine the strengths and weaknesses of particular theories for developing effective population and community-based prevention and intervention programs. Students will critically analyze the health behavior of individuals and population and will conceptualize theories, models,
frameworks, and programs from the social and behavioral sciences. Throughout the course, students will evaluate individual, interpersonal, intrapersonal, community, and planning theories to study, promote, and protect the public’s health.
Population Health Sciences 787: Field Work Seminar (Instructors-Barbara Duerst, Linda
Baumann, Debbie Siegenthaler): This 1-credit seminar is designed to prepare students for
participation in the MPH Program’s Field Experience and Capstone Project. This seminar outlines the policies, procedures and expectations for students undertaking the MPH field work
requirement. Students will learn basic skills needed to complete a field experience and/or work in the community.
Population Health Sciences 788: Public Health Field Work (Instructor-Debbie Siegenthaler): The 6-credit Field Experience is designed to provide students with practical experience, allowing them to apply and incorporate skills and knowledge learned during their graduate study. MPH students will participate in a population focused field experience following the completion of the majority of their coursework and will begin applying population-focused skills in a community or public health setting. Throughout the field experience, students will integrate public health theory, knowledge and skills; experience the “realities” of public health; complete a defined project in an area of public health practice; gain/expand/develop skills and knowledge in an area of interest not covered in depth elsewhere in the student’s educational plan; and demonstrate leadership,
teamwork, communication skills and creativity in the development of public health practice activity.
Methods courses allow students to develop public health skills. Students are required to complete one 3-credit course chosen from the following list of approved courses:
Interprofessional Human Ecology 501: Evaluation Research in Practice
This course introduces students to the design and use of evaluation to understand and assess those places within communities (e.g., groups, organizations, networks, associations) that are critical to civil society. The course combines community-based experiential learning (i.e., collaborative action research and/or descriptive analysis of selected settings) with classroom instruction.
Population Health Sciences 552: Regression Methods for Population Health
This course serves as an introduction to the primary statistical tools used in epidemiology and health services research; multiple linear regression, logistic regression, and survival analysis. Counseling Psychology 719: Introduction to Qualitative Methods
In this course we will explore the philosophical foundations of qualitative methods, connecting
them to their homes in education and other disciplines. In addition, we will look across a variety of qualitative methods to examine assumptions about the nature of knowledge and reality, the relationship between the researcher and the researched, issues of standards and ethics, and methods for generating and communicating data and interpretation. We will read methodological and theoretical works that represent various genres of qualitative research and exemplars of
qualitative studies in education. Among the types of qualitative work we will explore are case study, ethnography, grounded theory, narrative analysis, discourse analysis and practitioner research.
Nursing 761: Health Program Planning, Evaluation, and Quality Improvement
This course provides content in the concepts and methods of program planning and evaluation in the context of healthcare and community health organizations. Provides basic content related to designing and implementing health services quality improvement projects.
Population Health Sciences 798: Epidemiologic Methods
The main emphasis of this course is the design and interpretation of epidemiologic studies. The course includes hands-on experience in the evaluation of epidemiologic evidence, the analysis of epidemiologic data, and the discussion of strategies aimed to improve study validity and
efficiency.
Population Health Sciences 803: Monitoring Population Health
This course is designed to help you learn about using and collecting both quantitative and
qualitative data to inform your public health/population health work. The course will provide a very practical approach to analyzing and using existing data sources such as the census, BRFSS, the state's searchable health data system, and others.
Public Affairs 871: Public Program Evaluation
In this course graduate students study strategies for evaluating the efficacy of public programs, as well as strategies for addressing the challenges of applying program evaluation methods in “real world” policy settings. The estimation of a policy or program’s impact—based on observation and measurement of the program over time, the careful construction of a counterfactual state (what would have happened in the absence of the program), and hypothesis testing and estimation using experimental or non-experimental methods—is often a long and involved process if done well. As capacities for data collection and storage have expanded and tools for evaluation have advanced, the demands for program evaluation have grown exponentially. At the same time, however, expectations for using information that is readily and regularly collected to inform decision making and to make adjustments to programs as needed to increase their effectiveness have also risen, creating new challenges for the evaluation field. It is a goal of this course to expose students to “state of the art” methods in program evaluation and to provide them with an understanding of when and how they can be most usefully applied to produce knowledge and evidence of program effectiveness to guide program and policy decision making. This course focuses primarily on quantitative methods of program evaluation, although we will discuss the role and importance of qualitative research methods as well in the various stages of program
evaluation. The course also address the relationship between program theory and evaluation design, ethical issues in program evaluation, the use of data for continuous quality improvement, interpretation of research findings, and the role of evaluation results in program and policy development.
Population Health Sciences 875: Assessment of Medical Technologies
The overall goal of this course is to introduce the student to the key concepts of health technology assessment, with a focus on comparative-effectiveness and cost-effectiveness analysis. This field is young, but it is very broad and multidisciplinary. This means that there are many possible angles from which to teach the material, and a fair deal of context (and pretext) behind it. It also means, quite simply, that there is a lot of challenging material and many different ways to do basically the same thing and substantial disagreement about what is the “best” way. It is
impossible to cover every interesting topic (much less every important one!) from every angle in a single course. But hopefully, you will become equipped with the tools necessary to begin to do your own research and to be able to find further information (and perhaps most importantly, to know when it is necessary to find further information).
Population Health Sciences/Public Affairs 881: Benefit Cost Analysis
This course will present the welfare economics underpinnings for evaluating the social benefits and costs of government activities. Issues such as uncertainty, the social discount rate, and welfare weights will be discussed; case studies from the environmental, social policy, and agricultural areas will be studied.
Social Work/Public Affairs 974: Qualitative Methods for Social Science Research
This interactive, intensive seminar is designed to introduce the principles, methods and practice of qualitative social science research. The course is structured to address four domains: 1)
philosophical underpinnings and ethical considerations in qualitative research; 2) considerations in designing a qualitative study and getting it off the ground; 3) major techniques for gathering evidence (e.g., observational/field research, interviews, and focus groups); and 4) fundamental strategies for analyzing and reporting qualitative data. Both positivist and interpretive approaches to the use of qualitative methods will be examined. Pragmatism as a philosophical foundation for qualitative social science research, as well as design and methodological features of research traditions of inquiry that have a distinguished history in the social sciences (e.g., narrative, case study, ethnography, grounded theory, and phenomenology) will be highlighted. The course will enable students to critically evaluate and enhance the “quality” of qualitative data (i.e., understand the essential strategies for ensuring analytic rigor), and learn how to integrate qualitative and quantitative methods.
The criterion is met.
Strengths: The courses are not only strongly grounded in theory but also in practical application as a result of the experience that many of the instructional personnel have in formal public health practice.
Weaknesses: One of the core courses, Principles of Environmental Health for Public Health
Practice, consistently received low performance evaluations by the students. This course has
been revamped and will be delivered in a revised manner in spring 2014 (see Criterion 1.2.b). The course continues to undergo change and its performance will continue to be monitored.
Plans: Other than monitoring the core course in environmental health, no other actions are being undertaken or deemed necessary at this time.
2.3.b. Assessment of the extent to which this criterion is met and an analysis of the program’s strengths, weaknesses and plans relating to this criterion.
2.4 Practical Skills. All graduate professional public health degree students must