Curriculum

• Core Courses
• Emergency Preparedness Concentration
• Global Health Concentration
• Health Promotion and Education Concentration
• Public Health Management Concentration
• Practice Placement & Culminating Experience

Core Courses
(28 quarter hours)

To satisfy the Council on Education for Public Health core curricular elements for graduate programs in community health/preventive medicine and to sufficiently educate enrolled students in the fundamentals of public health, seven core courses will be offered and must be completed by all students admitted to the program. (These are PDF files. You will need Adobe Reader, a free download, to read them.)

Concentration
(16 Quarter Hours)

The M.P.H. program offers four concentration areas of study Emergency Preparedness, Global Health, Health Promotion and Education, and Public Health Management. Students admitted to the program will select one concentration area and complete the specified courses in that area. Each concentration requires a minimum of 16 credit hours of study.

Emergency Preparedness Concentration

The emergency preparedness concentration is designed to provide a graduate level education to the public health workforce, including public health professionals, physicians, registered nurses, allied health care providers, hospital executives, public safety personnel, and emergency management officials. The program will use multiple and diverse educational programs at the university to highlight the educational interface between public health, emergency medicine, the "science" of bioterrorism, politics, and organizational needs required to understand and prepare for disasters and associated potential mass casualties.

Concentration Guidelines

Public Health Management Concentration

The public health management concentration will provide students with depth of knowledge in issues impacting the management and administration in applied public health and associated work settings. Those who complete course work in this concentration will have advanced competencies in strategy, leadership, personnel, finance, health-related systems, and human resources. Course offerings in the management concentration are in partnership with the Boonshoft School of Medicine, the Raj Soin College of Business, and the College of Liberal Arts. Concentration Guidelines

Practice Placement & Applied Project/Problem Paper

A major strength of the WSU M.P.H. program is in providing students with opportunities to apply learning directly within the community setting. The applied research component serves to ground students in "real world" public health applications, and provides service to the community. Each student will work with a faculty representative and a community preceptor. This will constitute the first component of applied learning.

The second component of the applied learning is the intensive culminating experience. Each student will work with his or her faculty advisor to develop an appropriate applied project. The applied project will include elements from the core courses as well as mastery of the concentration area of study. The student will have a primary program committee including an academic advisor, one additional university faculty member, and a field practicum representative. Program committee members will work closely with students in the development and completion of the project. The culminating experience has three primary components: a proposal, a written applied project paper and an oral presentation.