McHale Aimee, Excellent Marie Lina, Fleming W Oscar, Upshaw Vaughn Mamlin
Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States.
Front Public Health. 2025 Jul 18;13:1612610. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1612610. eCollection 2025.
Leadership is essential to public health practice, yet few MPH programs offer structured, integrated approaches to cultivating leadership competencies. At the University of North Carolina's Gillings School of Global Public Health, the Leadership in Practice (LIP) MPH concentration responds to this gap by embedding problem-based learning (PBL) throughout a multi-course curriculum designed to prepare students for real-world leadership challenges. Drawing on interdisciplinary faculty expertise and a constructivist pedagogical philosophy, the LIP curriculum emphasizes systems thinking, strategic decision-making, and values-based leadership development. This manuscript describes how PBL is applied across five required courses to help students synthesize technical knowledge with collaborative problem-solving and applied leadership skills. We also present alumni and employer feedback that illustrates the curriculum's impact on workplace readiness and leadership capacity. This case study offers a model for integrating leadership development into graduate public health education and calls for broader adoption of applied, interdisciplinary pedagogies that prepare students to lead transformative change in diverse public health settings.
领导力对公共卫生实践至关重要，但很少有公共卫生硕士项目提供结构化、综合性的方法来培养领导能力。在北卡罗来纳大学的吉利斯全球公共卫生学院，实践领导力公共卫生硕士专业方向通过在多门课程的整个课程体系中融入基于问题的学习（PBL）来应对这一差距，该课程体系旨在让学生为应对现实世界中的领导挑战做好准备。借助跨学科教师的专业知识和建构主义教学理念，实践领导力课程强调系统思维、战略决策以及基于价值观的领导力发展。本文描述了如何在五门必修课程中应用基于问题的学习，以帮助学生将技术知识与协作式问题解决和应用领导技能相结合。我们还展示了校友和雇主的反馈，这些反馈说明了该课程对工作准备和领导能力的影响。本案例研究提供了一个将领导力发展融入研究生公共卫生教育的模式，并呼吁更广泛地采用应用型跨学科教学法，使学生能够在不同的公共卫生环境中引领变革。
