Public health practice and program management is designed to prepare experienced clinicians (i.e., in medicine, dentistry, nursing, social work, etc.) and public health practitioners with the knowledge and skillset to assume leadership roles apart of multidisciplinary health care teams. A degree in this specialty incorporates features of several other public health disciplines and specialties including maternal and child health, substance abuse, mental health and environmental health, among others.
Your degree will prepare you to develop, implement and evaluate effective public health initiatives. You also will be able to create and analyze programs in the context of the communities they serve, taking into account cultural, social, economic, ethical and legal factors.
Working Conditions
A career in public health practice and program management will provide you with a variety of skills that can be translated to clinical, public, federal, national or even international work. In any of these work settings you could be working for a public or private entity. Most professionals in this field will become experts of the best practices for their field of interest. This provide public health practitioners with the ability to lend their expertise to a variety of organizations and programs.
Academic Requirements
Programs in public health practice and program management are highly interdisciplinary. Many cater to established professionals with prior public health experience. The curriculum may cover a wide range of areas, including public health practice, epidemiology, program analysis and data-based inference. Due to the large emphasis of experience associated with his field of study any schools and programs may offer this program as a part-time, on-line, or as a combined executive program option.
You can search for schools in this field on the Association of Schools & Programs of Public Health’s (ASPPH) website. SOPHAS is the centralized online application service for students applying to a school or program of public health accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH). A complete list of accredited schools and programs can be found on the CEPH website.
Resources
- Visit This Is Public Health for more information about pursuing a career in public health.
- Receive more information about Public Health, events, and deadlines
- Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health
- American Public Health Association
- Council on Education for Public Health
- Delta Omega
- National Board of Public Health Examiners