Accelerated MPH in General Public Health

Overview

All GPH students are required to complete an Applied Practice Experience (APEx). The APEx is a vital part of the service-learning process allowing students to address domestic and global issues across all areas of public health practice. Through the APEx, students focus on community engagement projects and provide host organizations with valuable services, and/or research expertise that relate directly to the ongoing mission and activities of the site and that meet the defined healthcare needs of the site’s surrounding community. Each student’s APEx projects are:

• thoroughly planned in consultation with a faculty advisor and site supervisor;
• monitored on site;
• evaluated by the student, site supervisor, and faculty advisor.

In the GPH program, APEX projects are individually selected and tailored to meet student needs with the focus, substance, and approach varying by student. The APEx may include work in administrative, research, or clinical settings, or participation in ongoing health education, research, or program activities.

Regardless of the setting and specific project, students are required to produce a minimum of two non-academic work samples that demonstrate attainment of at least five competencies. Examples of acceptable work samples include: project plans, grant proposals, training manuals, lesson plans, surveys, videos, podcasts, presentations, spreadsheets, web sites.

Scheduling/Time Requirements

General Public Health students may participate in the APEx at any point after the completion of the Core curriculum. Students who must return to a medical school program or begin residency often will begin their APEx during the spring semester. For those with more flexibility, the APEx may be completed during the summer. It is expected that GPH students will devote a minimum of 140 hours towards an APEx project. This is usually accomplished by working approximately 10 hours per week during a 14-week semester, or 15-20 hours per week during the summer months. Dual degree students may choose to continue APEx work after completing GPH coursework and returning to the other Columbia graduate school.

Completion and Evaluation

Once the APEx project concludes, students submit an APEx Completion Form. The form enables students to upload their APEx deliverables and to identify the competencies demonstrated through their work. Once students submit the APEx Completion Form, it is forwarded to their faculty advisor for review. The Faculty Advisor then evaluates the students’ APEx work samples to verify that identified public health competencies have been achieved. Once approved by the faculty advisor, the APEx Completion Form is sent to Enrollment Services to confirm the APEx requirement has been fulfilled.

Recent APEx Sites

• Bedford Stuyvesant Family Health Center
• Columbia Center for Cardiovascular Health
• Partnership to End Addiction
• Health Prevent 360
• New York State Psychiatric Institute
• Harlem Wellness Center
• Foundation for the Localization and Innovation of Global Health Technologies

ILE Overview

The Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH), the institution that accredits public health schools and programs in the United States, requires that all students complete an Integrated Learning Experience (ILE) to earn an MPH degree. The ILE, submitted as students near completion of their degree, is considered the culminating experience providing students with the opportunity to highlight proficiencies and to make connections between significant elements of the MPH education. The ILE requirement stipulates students demonstrate the acquisition and synthesis of competencies they have identified with their faculty advisors through the submission of a written document of superior quality.

ILE Options

• APEx Critical Analysis and Synthesis Paper or E-portfolio
• Review Article
• Research Manuscript

While GPH students have no required courses in the spring semester after completing the Core, they are required to fulfill a minimum of five program level competencies which can be chosen from course offerings throughout the School's academic departments. In November, students are provided with a complete list of courses that map to departmental and certificate competencies. With guidance from their faculty advisor and the Associate Director of the GPH program students select courses that align with their interests and further their development of public health competencies. Below are example competencies GPH students may select and a sample of courses that GPH students have enrolled in.

Competencies

• Apply descriptive techniques commonly used to summarize public health data.
• Appraise the scientific basis for adverse and disruptive human health effects from climate change, including direct, indirect, and complex/downstream processes.
• Apply appropriate epidemiologic and statistical measures to generate, calculate, and draw valid inferences from public health data.
• Describe the historical epidemiological transition and its impact on chronic disease across resource-poor and developed regions of the globe.
• Appraise sources and types of data, including gaps in current research, related to infectious diseases, and the principal methods that are available for analyzing data relating to infectious diseases.
• Design and synthesize methodologically sound, evidence-based research to improve both public health practice and policy in one or more of the main substantive areas of the department (sexuality and sexual and reproductive health and rights; child, youth, and family health; maternal and child health; health and human rights; public health and humanitarian action; implementation science; and complex health systems).
• Assess human rights norms, instruments, and tools that are pertinent to advancing social justice in public health and conceiving of public health as a tool of social justice (or injustice).
• Apply theory and utilize strategy-based communication principles, models and planning frameworks in the design, implementation and evaluation of health communication interventions that would result in healthier behaviors, and/or social, organizational and policy change.
• Conduct a preliminary community assets assessment and describe key findings and next steps.

Courses

BIST 6110 Statistical Computing with SAS
EHSC 8304 Public Health Impacts of Climate Change
EPID 8438 EPI II: Design and Conduct of of Observational Epidemiology
EPID 8415 Chronic Disease Epidemiology
EPID 8406 Infectious Disease Epidemiology
POPF 8601 Public Health Program Planning
POPF 8617 Research Design and Data Collection
POPF 8607 Health and Human Rights Advocacy
SOSC 8795 New Media and Health
SOSC 8771 Community-based Participatory Research