Pennel Cara L, Agana-Norman Denny Fe G, Stalnaker Leslie A, Wiltz-Beckham Dana, Luna Marisol
Department of Population Health and Health Disparities, School of Public and Population Health, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, USA.
Office of Academic Affairs, School of Public and Population Health, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX, USA.
Public Health Rep. 2024 Nov 19:333549241296787. doi: 10.1177/00333549241296787.
Revised accreditation criteria from the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) in 2016 prompted schools and programs of public health to shift their master of public health (MPH) core curricula. Our objective was to provide data on revisions to MPH core curricula at CEPH-accredited schools and programs of public health and other descriptive statistics on the MPH core curriculum and required courses as of 2023.
We analyzed data from 67 accredited schools of public health and 130 accredited public health programs to assess changes from 2016 to 2023 in the MPH core curriculum. We examined the number of courses, the proportion of credit hours in the core curriculum, core curriculum composition, and course types.
Almost half (49.2%) of schools, but only 16.9% of programs, made extensive changes to their MPH core curricula, an overall increase of 153.6% from 2020 to 2023. Approximately one-fifth of schools and programs made few to no changes to their core curricula and retained core courses in the 5 former core disciplines. On average, core curriculum credit hours comprised 37.8% of total credit hours for schools and 51.7% for programs. Half (50.0%) of all programs in the sample offered single-concentration MPH degrees. Schools and programs were more likely to continue requiring traditional biostatistics (81.7%) and epidemiology (81.2%) courses in the core curriculum compared with environmental health (69.0%), social and behavioral health (61.9%), and health policy and management (42.1%).
Most schools and programs modified their MPH core curricula, reflecting a departure from traditional public health courses toward innovative approaches to ensure knowledge and skill proficiency of graduates. Future research will determine if these curricular changes improve the knowledge and skill proficiency of public health graduates and the workforce.
2016年公共卫生教育委员会（CEPH）修订的认证标准促使公共卫生学院和项目调整其公共卫生硕士（MPH）核心课程。我们的目标是提供有关CEPH认证的公共卫生学院和项目中MPH核心课程修订的数据，以及截至2023年MPH核心课程和必修课程的其他描述性统计数据。
我们分析了67所认证公共卫生学院和130个认证公共卫生项目的数据，以评估2016年至2023年MPH核心课程的变化。我们研究了课程数量、核心课程学分比例、核心课程构成和课程类型。
近一半（49.2%）的学校，但只有16.9%的项目对其MPH核心课程进行了大幅修改，从2020年到2023年总体增加了153.6%。约五分之一的学校和项目对其核心课程几乎没有或没有进行更改，并保留了5个以前核心学科的核心课程。平均而言，核心课程学分占学校总学分的37.8%，占项目总学分的51.7%。样本中所有项目的一半（50.0%）提供单一专业的MPH学位。与环境卫生（69.0%）、社会和行为健康（61.9%）以及卫生政策与管理（42.1%）相比，学校和项目更有可能继续在核心课程中要求开设传统的生物统计学（81.7%）和流行病学（81.2%）课程。
大多数学校和项目修改了其MPH核心课程，这反映了从传统公共卫生课程向创新方法的转变，以确保毕业生具备知识和技能。未来的研究将确定这些课程变化是否能提高公共卫生毕业生和劳动力的知识和技能水平。
