Evaluative Sciences: Educational Programs

The Graduate Program of Public Health 

• The Evaluative Sciences concentration builds on a rigorous core curriculum that includes advanced statistical and research methods for health studies in communities and health care organizations. The core areas are clinical research, clinical outcomes research, health services research, and public health research. There is a special emphasis on integrating cost effectiveness and cost benefit concepts into the curriculum so that resource allocation issues are considered. Graduates with an MPH in Evaluative Sciences will be well prepared to conduct cutting edge research on important population health problems.

• The Community Health concentration prepares students for community-based work in public health. The core areas include theories of health behavior and health communication, as well as planning, implementing, and evaluating health programs.  Students within this concentration are prepared to participate in community health improvement projects and/or interventions, and community-based participatory research.

• The Public Health Practice concentration is designed to prepare health professionals for public health practice.  This concentration is only available to students with a clinical degree or studying for a clinical degree (e.g., nursing, medicine, dentistry, registered dietician, physical therapy, physician assistant, etc.) Then, the MPH degree enhances their clinical degree and gives them professional growth opportunities

• The Population Health specialization focuses on understanding the community and the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of public health and community-based interventions. It emphasizes community health assessments, evaluations of community-based interventions, determinants of population health studies, and development of evidence-based public health practice including efficiency, effectiveness, and access studies. Students will identify a cognate area that provides theoretical and/or methodological depth related to a population health problem and its determinants.

• The Clinical Outcomes specialization provides students with the tools to design new diagnostic approaches, enhance preventive or chronic care strategies, and analyze the patient care outcomes for clinical disciplines. Moreover, the students within the clinical outcomes specialization will be able to formulate policies, advance clinical practice, or identify patient-based opportunities to improve medical care.