MPH - Public Health

Course used to facilitate MPH orientation.

This course provides an overview of the major social and behavioral factors relevant to public health. Students will explore various health problems and investigate how social and behavioral issues impact both the individual and public health. Major theories of behavior change and their application to public health interventions are introduced. Finally, community dynamics and their influence on both onset and management of public health issues are also discussed.

This course explores the principal health problems of the world's population and the major challenges to improving health at the rural and global level in resource-constrained and marginalized communities. It explores factors that result in unequal distribution of health and disease services int he world. The course will incorporate knowledge and views from multiple academic disciplines (public health, economics, politics, management, sociology, etc,) and does not require background knowledge in global health.

This is an introduction to the field of epidemiology that focuses upon basic epidemiological definitions, common courses of data, and measures of disease occurrent and epidemiological study designs. Epidemiological processes of both chronic and infectious diseases are discussed. Practical skills such as calculation of rates, estimating risks and evaluation of public health screening programs are also included.

This course is designed to introduce students to environmental health, a core public health discipline. Course content will focus on introducing major sources of physical, chemical, and biological agents that pose a threat to the environment and how those agents influence the health of the public. The ability of prevention programs, intervention strategies and governmental policies and regulations to control environmental issues will also be discussed.

This course will allow graduate professional public health degree students to develop skills in basic public health concepts and demonstrate the application of these concepts in an applied setting through a practice experience that is relevant to students' areas of specialization.

This course provides a macro-level study of healthcare systems including delivery, integration, reimbursement mechanisms, multi-organzational and interorganizational arrangements, health policies and future solutions.

This is an advanced epidemiology course designed to expand on topics from the introduction to epidemiology course and introduce new material, including a practical guide to the EPI-INFO software, logistic regression methods, and an introduction to field epidemiology. Areas of additional emphasis will include the evaluation of epidemiological surveillance systems, identification of threats to validity and sources of bias, and topics on the epidemiology of infectious and chronic diseases. Prerequisite: MPH-530.

The course provides an overview of rural communities, rural health disparities, and rural health delivery systems. It identifies federal, state, and local official health organizations and their role in the intergovernmental health system in the U.S. It discusses the need for a stronger public health leadership presence. The course highlights illustrative public health problems, diseases, and risk factors and the role of public health as an intervening agent.

Students explore the fundamental concepts and techniques of planning, implementating and evaluating public health programs. It covers concepts that are relevant to evaluation of health, social and behavioral interventions in the community settings. These include program interventions, implementation and impact evaluation concepts, models, indicator development, methods of practice, data collection, analysis and interpretation strategies. The course investigates the role of planning and evaluation in improving program implementation, management and outcomes.

The capstone project is a public health research project that features the use of epidemiologic methods and biostatistical tests. It involves the collection of data from human subjects, either directly or from their health records, and not simply the analysis of an existing data set. The capstone project addresses a real public health problem. Any area of public health can be represented: infectious disease, chronic disease, injury, maternal and child health, environmental health, behavioral health, or health services delivery. The project is conducted under the supervision of a faculty advisor.