Department of Health, Sport & Exercise Sciences, School of Education and Human Sciences, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, United States.
College of Public Health and Health Professions, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States.
Front Public Health. 2024 Nov 8;12:1383077. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1383077. eCollection 2024.
Recognizing and addressing health inequities among minority populations are pivotal to public health. Further, public health strives to understand the complexities between race and health without limiting discussions around race as a trivial variable. This commitment toward equity demonstrates considerable similarities to Critical Race Theory (CRT) which led to the creation of the Public Health Critical Race (PHCR) Praxis to instill CRT within public health. However, the literature on how public health education incorporates critical race studies remains limited. The goal of this study was to examine how public health curriculum currently aligns with the PHCR praxis and meets public health's goal of health equity.
This qualitative study employed document analysis to evaluate academic syllabi from CEPH-accredited MPH programs. Stratified random sampling was applied across two sampling pools, Schools of Public Health (SPH), and Public Health Programs (PHP). Course overviews, course objectives, course curricular information, and course policies were identified and extracted from each syllabus for analysis. A total of 53 syllabi were obtained from a final sample of nine public universities and one private.
Through inductive and directed content analysis, a priori themes of Structural Determinism, Voice, Critical Approaches, Ordinariness of Racism, Social Construction of Knowledge, Intersectionality, Disciplinary Self-Critique, Primacy of Racialization, Race as a Social Construct, Race Consciousness, and their respective categories arose as salient. Two new themes, Antiracism Practices and Culture of Inclusivity, were also present.
This study is the first to explore public health education's current curricular practices concerning CRT and antiracist praxes. The results confirm the interwoven nature of public health education with critical race studies, as all principles of PHCR praxis were present. However, the prevalence of these principles varied, suggesting gaps in the alignment of public health curricula and CRT. It is essential that public health educators ensure that the foundational competencies students are expected to display align with public health's goal of health equity. This work can equip MPH programs and public health educators with the ability to revise or bolster their current curricular and instructional efforts to support the pursuit of health, racial equity, and social justice.
认识和解决少数群体的健康不平等问题是公共卫生的关键。此外，公共卫生努力理解种族与健康之间的复杂性，而不将种族问题视为一个微不足道的变量。这种公平的承诺与批判种族理论（Critical Race Theory，CRT）有很大的相似之处，这导致了公共卫生批判种族（Public Health Critical Race，PHCR）实践的创建，以将 CRT 融入公共卫生。然而，关于公共卫生教育如何纳入批判种族研究的文献仍然有限。本研究的目的是检验公共卫生课程目前如何与 PHCR 实践相一致，并满足公共卫生健康公平的目标。
本定性研究采用文献分析评估了经 CEPH 认证的 MPH 项目的学术教学大纲。分层随机抽样应用于两个抽样池，即公共卫生学院（School of Public Health，SPH）和公共卫生项目（Public Health Program，PHP）。从每个教学大纲中确定并提取课程概述、课程目标、课程课程信息和课程政策进行分析。从最终的九所公立大学和一所私立大学的样本中获得了 53 份教学大纲。
通过归纳和有指导的内容分析，出现了结构决定论、声音、批判方法、种族主义的平凡性、知识的社会建构、交叉性、学科自我批评、种族化的首要地位、种族作为社会建构、种族意识以及各自类别的先验主题。还出现了两个新主题，反种族主义实践和包容性文化。
这是第一项探索公共卫生教育中 CRT 和反种族主义实践的当前课程实践的研究。结果证实了公共卫生教育与批判种族研究的交织性质，因为 PHCR 实践的所有原则都存在。然而，这些原则的普遍性有所不同，表明公共卫生课程和 CRT 的一致性存在差距。公共卫生教育工作者确保学生应具备的基本能力与公共卫生健康公平的目标一致，这一点至关重要。这项工作可以使 MPH 项目和公共卫生教育工作者能够修改或加强他们当前的课程和教学工作，以支持健康、种族平等和社会正义的追求。
