The School of Public Health and Health Professions completed a site visit in February with the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH), a critical part of its reaccreditation process.

During the visit, SPHHP showcased the public health work and achievements of faculty, staff, students, alumni and community partners. CEPH reviewers spent three days speaking with people from all of those groups.

In advance of the site visit, SPHHP provided CEPH with a comprehensive, 286-page self-study that described how the school addresses public health standards for education set by CEPH, providing details about its programs, student services, goals and many other aspects of its program.

“The site visit gave us an opportunity to highlight all of our points of pride and public health achievements, such as the doubling in size of our public health programs over the past five years, very high graduation rates for public health students, and a better than 94% job-placement rate for public health students,” says Jean Wactawski-Wende, SUNY Distinguished Professor and SPHHP dean.

Adds Kim Krytus, assistant dean and director of graduate public health programs, and project manager for the reaccreditation process: “Our SPHHP public health graduates obtain jobs such as managers in public health departments and researchers with organizations like Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center and fellowships with the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health, among others. We were pleased to let CEPH know about those successes.”

CEPH is an independent agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education to accredit schools of public health, and public health programs outside schools of public health. Its accreditation process examines whether schools and programs:

• Meet the standards CEPH sets for defining the essential elements for educational quality.
• Develop public health professionals who are competent to enter practice.
• Can provide evidence they have successfully met these standards and program goals (outcomes).

SPHHP’s reaccreditation takes place every eight years; its last reaccreditation took place in 2015. The school has a few more months of processes to follow to formalize the findings of the reviewers. CEPH is reviewing all the materials SPHHP sent and information from their site visit, and will share its reaccreditation decision with the school in September.

“Faculty and staff contributed in so many ways to this intensive process, reviewing content we sent to CEPH and doing amazing work that gave us exceptional examples to share with the review team,” Wactawski-Wende notes.