Below you'll find a listing of required curriculum courses, as well as electives. Current students will find the most up-to-date offering of the current semester courses in HUB. Please consult your Academic Advisement Report (AAR) to best identify the appropriate coursework and understand your degree program requirements!
3 Credits, Fall Semester
Prerequisite: None
Designed to provide you with a graduate‐level overview of the role of the social and behavioral sciences in understanding and addressing public health problems. Three general topics are covered. First, we examine how psychological, social, and environmental factors influence people’s health and wellbeing. Second, we explore factors that influence health behavior, including individual, social, and environmental/community influences. Third, we explore how understanding behavior and social/environmental influences on health informs public health approaches to improving health and preventing disease. The course prepares public health students to satisfy MPH competencies in social and behavioral sciences.
Format: Seated and Online
3 Credits, Spring Semester
Prerequisite: STA 527
This graduate level course is designed to provide an introduction to the application of statistics to public health research questions. The course will also cover principles of data management and data verification. It will not provide instruction regarding statistics (STA 527 is a prerequisite), rather, we will build upon an individual’s statistical training to provide instruction in the use of common statistical packages to answer statistical questions. The course will have both in-class meetings as well as remote computer laboratory sessions (students will not be required to be in a classroom setting or online for the laboratory sessions, rather, students will complete these laboratory sessions at a location and time of their choice).
Format: Hybrid (some seated and some online components)
2 Credits, Spring Semester
Prerequisite: None
This course provides students with the foundations needed for public health professionals to work with other health professionals, along with key qualitative analysis and cultural competence skills. This course will also provide students with communication and conflict resolution skills.
This course satisfies some of the requirements for IPCP Digital Badges #1 and #2.
Format: Online
3 Credits, Fall Semester
Health Equity is designed to give students an in-depth understanding of the social determinants of health and how their ills and benefits are unequally distributed across society. We will cover differences in health status associated with race, ethnicity, immigrant status, education, income, disability, geographic location, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity. We will examine the multiple pathways through which these inequities produced and reinforced, including structural and interpersonal discrimination and stigma. We will also discuss methods for conducting research and intervening in disadvantaged communities. The course will provide historical and theoretical perspectives on the problem, provide a critical examination of empirical support for various explanatory pathways, and will cover approaches to studying and reducing health disparities.
Format: Online
1-3 Credits, Fall/Spring/Summer Semesters
Prerequisite: Permission of instructor
Allows students to synthesize the knowledge and skills developed during the academic portion of their program in a practical application setting. Field training experiences will be of various types depending upon the student’s interest and concentration area.
This course satisfies some of the requirements for IPCP Digital Badge #3.
Learn more about MPH Field Training.
3 Credits, Fall/Spring/Summer Semesters
Prerequisite: Permission of instructor
The purpose of the culminating project is for MPH students to integrate core public health knowledge and skills. It will take the form of a paper prepared during the concluding semester of the student’s program.
Learn more about the MPH Culminating Project.
Prerequisite: None
This course is intended to provide a basic introduction to principles and methods of epidemiology. The course emphasizes the conceptual aspects of epidemiologic investigation and application of these concepts in public health and related professions. Topics include overview of the epidemiologic approach to studying disease; the natural history of disease; measures of disease occurrence, association and risk; epidemiologic study designs; disease surveillance; population screening; interpreting epidemiologic associations; causal inference using epidemiologic information; and application of these basic concepts in the context of selected major diseases and risk factors. Please note that this course cannot be used for degrees that require EEH 501 unless pre-approved by the program director, or as a prerequisite for courses that require EEH 501.
Format: Online
Prerequisite: None
Introduces students to the historical development, structure, operation, and current and future directions of the major components of the American health care delivery and public health systems. It examines the ways in which health care services are organized and delivered, the influences that impact health care public policy decisions, factors that determine priorities in financing health care services and the relationship of health care costs to measurable benefits. The course enables students to assess the role of organized efforts to influence health policy formulation, and the contributions of medical technology, research findings, and societal values to the evolving U.S. health care delivery system. Class time is also devoted to exploring emerging policy, ethical and legal dilemmas resulting from medical and technological advances.
Format: seated and online
Cross listed with MGH 631 and LAW 718
Prerequisite: None
Introductory course that explores the role of environmental factors in health with an emphasis on characterization, assessment, and control of environmental hazards. Topics include application of toxicologic and epidemiologic methods in assessing risk and setting exposure limits; the nature of and control of hazards associated with food, water, air, solid and liquid waste, occupation, and radiation; risk communication and management, environmental justice; and environmental laws. The course concludes by examining the impact of human activity, such as energy use and pollution, on the environment and how human-induced environmental change, in turn, impacts public health and that of the planet as a whole.
Format: seated and online
Prerequisite: None
This course introduces students to public health issues from a practice-based perspective. Through presentations by public health leaders and practitioners, readings, group discussion and class activities, students practice integrating public concepts to better understand issues, and develop responses. Course content focuses on public health issues from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), American Public Health Association (APHA), World Health Organization (WHO), local and state health departments or other organizations.
This course partially satisfies the requirements for IPCP Digital Badge #1.
Format: online
Corequisite: Students must enroll in STA 527 LEC and STA 527 REC in the same term.
This course is designed for students concerned with medical data. The material covered includes: the design of clinical trials and epidemiological studies; data collection; summarizing and presenting data; probability; standard error; confidence intervals and significance tests; techniques of data analysis including multifactorial methods and the choice of statistical methods; problems of medical measurement and diagnosis; and vital statistics and calculation of sample size. The design and analysis of medical research studies will be illustrated. MINITAB is used to perform some data analysis. Descriptive statistics, probability distributions, estimation, tests of hypothesis, categorical data, regression model, analysis of variance, nonparametric methods, and others will be discussed as time permits.
Instructor: Kuhlmann
Format: seated and online
