Public Health

Jump to: 

• What is Public Health?
• What can I do with a Public Health Major?
• Interested in Continuing Your Education?

 

What is Public Health?

• Public Health is focused on the 3 P’s: Prevention, Health Promotion, and Health Protection
  • Prevention oriented strategies include working with physicians and labs to identify newly identified cases of certain infectious diseases and controlling the case or a contact of the case to reduce exposure and subsequent infection.
  • Health Promotion strategies involve educating populations about risks that might affect them.
  • Health Protection services include such things as vaccination campaigns, or restaurant inspections that ensure safe food handling practices are in place.
    
    
• The recent COVID-19 pandemic raised awareness of public health methods and practices oriented around disease transmission in populations. Prevention efforts included isolation and quarantine expectations, social distancing and masking, and contact tracing which effectively slowed the spread of a uniquely contagious pathogen. 
  
  
• Public Health is based in a social justice philosophy, believing that the benefits of good health and the burdens of poor health are bore by all of us in society. It is especially oriented around using Epidemiology to understand health inequities, where some population cohorts are at greater risk of certain health outcomes. Public Health is especially collaborative, working across many fields of study to ensure the health of populations.  

What can I do with a Public Health Major?

The Public Health program adheres to Council on Education for Public Health standards and is firmly rooted in the scientific exploration of public health. The program combines academic offerings from courses in the areas of English, economics, chemistry, environmental studies, health, political science, philosophy, psychology and sociology. This interdisciplinary program will provide students the knowledge and skills needed to contribute to local, state, national, and global public health initiatives in a wide variety of settings, including:

• Epidemiologist
• Community Health Worker
• Environmental Health
• Health Scientist
• Emergency Management
• Biomedical Informatics
• Health Educator
• Biostatistician
• Nutritionist
• Environmental Scientist
• Policy Analyst
• Case Manager
• Infectious Disease Specialist
• Contact Tracer
• Public Health Administrator 

Interested in Continuing Your Education?

With the guidance from our Program Director and the Pre-Health Advisor, the prerequisite courses for graduate school will be included into the student’s schedule depending on their choice of health care field and selection of schools. These programs include

• Pre-Medicine
• Pre-Dentistry
• Pre-Law
• Healthcare Management
• Health Services Administration
• Laboratory Sciences
• Health Policy