The program features two tracks. The first will begin this September and is designed for physicians, but may include people with doctorates or with extensive public health or health care experience. These students will attend school fulltime for one year, taking eight courses and completing a thesis. The second track will begin June 2001, with a community service internship. This track is intended for students who have bachelor's or master's degree. Over 18 months, students will take 12 courses, participate in two internships, and complete a thesis.
Interweave public health and health services and you get Brown's new master's in public health degree (MPH) program. The program cleared its final hurdle when the Board of Fellows approved it during its meeting held Commencement Weekend.
MPH programs at other universities usually specialize in either public health or health care. The new Brown curriculum integrates both, building on longstanding ties between the Division of Biology and Medicine and the Rhode Island Department of Health. As a quasi city-state, Rhode Island is unique, having just one health department statewide. The program was developed by a committee of representatives from Brown and from the Department of Health, and will be overseen by a similar group.
"Public health agencies and health care organizations coexist nationwide, but few have functional relationships, making for missed opportunities" said Joann Lindenmayer, director of the new MPH program. She is an assistant professor of community health and a chronic disease epidemiologist in the Rhode Island Department of Health.
The new program is designed to prepare professionals who are at home in both the public health and health services arenas, Lindenmayer said. "The nation is moving toward a population-based approach to delivering health care, which is what health departments have done traditionally," she said.
In this case, the program's strong ties to the Department of Health "define the character of the training, the types of internship exposures that students will have, and has helped define the mission," said Vince Mor, chair of the Department of Community Health, which will administer the program.
Moreover, the Brown program focuses "on public and private health and health service functions with a special emphasis on training in the analytic tools," he said. This makes it possible to translate health data into information, and then into policy, "which is perfectly consistent with the changing needs of the public health sector in the United States," Mor said.
The Brown program will be the first MPH offered in Rhode Island. Until now, there was "no MPH program or school of public health in Rhode Island, which had put us at a disadvantage in terms of recruiting and training health personnel in the state," said Bill Waters, deputy director, Department of Health.
Undergraduates, graduate students, physicians, fellows and others have asked Brown to offer a master's degree in public health. The Department of Community Health has experienced substantial growth in its undergraduate concentration over the past few years, reflecting a growing regard among undergraduates about issues related to health and health care, Mor said.
"This growing interest is paralleled by a growing interest in additional training in the public health disciplines among physicians, particularly those being trained in a school like Brown, where primary care and community exposure are important aspects of the curriculum," he said.
Next year, for example, six Brown medical students, who either recently finished or are in their last year of medical school will attend the Harvard School of Public Health, getting MPH degrees, Mor said. "While not all of those individuals will be right for the program we are building, several are. Thus, this program emerged in response to perceived demand from the Brown community as well as the Rhode Island community."
The program features two tracks. The first will begin this September and is designed for physicians, but may include people with doctorates or with extensive public health or health care experience. These students will attend school fulltime for one year, taking eight courses and completing a thesis.
The second track will begin June 2001, with a community service internship. This track is intended for students who have bachelor's or master's degree. Over 18 months, students will take 12 courses, participate in two internships, and complete a thesis.
At the core of each track are courses in health systems, epidemiology, health behavior, biostatistics and environmental health. The internships will be community service and analytic opportunities. In the latter, data will be collected, scrutinized and used to develop health policy.
The MPH program will be closely tied to the Brown centers, institutes and programs gathered under the University's Public Health Program umbrella. An MPH curriculum is a natural complement to the formation of the Public Health Program, Lindenmayer said. "It is about applied public health. And Brown's history of public service makes this the right place to do this."
All activities in the MPH curriculum will be conducted in the context of social responsibility and community involvement, Lindenmayer said.
"We want to graduate people committed to serving the needs of communities in a socially responsible way," she said. "We see these health professionals playing active and important parts in securing the collaboration of public health and health care for the improvement of population and community-based health."
Waters is pleased to see the new MPH in place, but he said that the program is "not the total answer" to the public health education needs in Rhode Island. There is also a need for a continuing education or adult education program for those already in the field, he said. "The new program at Brown certainly responds to part of the challenge we face," Waters said.