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Working in public health means dedicating yourself to helping others and driving healthcare improvements. Therefore, if you’re eager to make an impact in your community and create systemic change, a master’s degree in public health is essential. Choosing a public health education that offers real-world experience opportunities is crucial to your success.
This is why Regis College’s Master of Public Health (MPH) program emphasizes real-world experience rather than only a theoretical understanding of public health trends. This hands-on approach gives future public health leaders the opportunity to address and solve health issues while enrolled.
“We follow a community-centered approach,” says Dr. Frazier Beatty, director of the online Master of Public Health program at Regis College. “Our program gives students the opportunity to have real-world experiences to prepare them for meaningful contributions to their communities.”
For those interested in a public health degree program that emphasizes real-world application, here is an overview of the Regis College public health curriculum and past alumni who have significantly contributed while enrolled in the MPH program.
To ensure you are able to make a lasting impact in public health it’s important to ensure a program offers a robust foundational education on relevant topics in healthcare.
“When you get a master of public health degree at Regis College, you're going to get the foundations of every area of public health,” Beatty says.
The foundational public health courses include:
While these courses are included in most MPH degree curriculums, Regis College explores these topics on a large scale.
“We help our students understand these issues on a local community basis,” Beatty says. “But we also encourage them to think about them from a global perspective. I think we’re very different in that way.”
While foundational courses are an important aspect of an effective education, specialization offers additional opportunities to enhance your public health career options post-graduation.
Regis College’s public health program offers two concentrations:
While concentrations are common among MPH degree programs, Regis College public health faculty review these topics with an interdisciplinary focus.
For example, Regis’ program teaches students how to collaborate across various sectors outside traditional health care settings.
“One topic we talk about differently at Regis is collaboration outside of ‘normal procedures’ in public health,” Beatty says. “This can mean collaborating with police departments to deal with mental health challenges, communicating with the VA to deal with veterans’ trauma, or even working with fire departments for safety demonstrations.”
This coursework is essential to understanding the complexities in healthcare, as well as developing essential public health skills that can make you effective in the field. However, real-world experience opportunities are the only way you can make a real impact while in school.
Here is a closer look at how Regis College educates students outside of the classroom.
Fieldwork is essential to Regis College’s public health program, offering students hands-on experience in real-world settings. These experiences require students to apply classroom knowledge to public health challenges while supervised by faculty who are experienced professionals in the field.
“Since experiential learning is so important in public health, we create hands-on experience opportunities for students to have diverse networks and resources to do public health work,” Beatty says.
Some common fieldwork placements at Regis include:
In addition to these diverse examples, Regis College also incorporates a global element to their fieldwork opportunities. For example, the school has partnerships with universities in Uganda and other international institutions. Students were even able to take a trip to South America to do public health work overseas.
The capstone project is another key element of Regis College’s hands-on MPH degree program. Over the course of 16 weeks, students are required to complete a research-based project meant to design an intervention that addresses a specific public health challenge.
“Students need to figure out what the problem is, and how to solve it,” Beatty says. “And with the help of a preceptor, which is a public health expert already in the field, students can make a lasting impact as a result of their project.”
In addition to gaining real-world experience during the research portion of the project, each student must defend their project—almost like a dissertation defense according to Beatty.
“These are wonderful to witness,” Beatty continues. “This is largely because students often realize at this moment that they can really make a difference.”
With a large emphasis on leveraging public health education to make a lasting impact in the community, Regis College’s MPH program has produced several effective public health advocates.
For example, Jessica Hekmati ‘23 focused her capstone project on identifying gaps in public health initiatives targeting Q fever. Her work led to the creation of several recommendations that eventually became an epidemiological assessment of Q fever among ruminants and humans in Utah.
For those interested in solving the challenges of maternal care, Regis College has nurtured future advocates in this field as well. Alexis Perez ‘23 used her practicum as an opportunity to conduct community assessments of the maternal healthcare ecosystem in Tennessee to identify the disparities in maternal care, as well as maternal mortality and morbidity in urban and rural areas.
While this work has made a profound impact in the communities these Regis College students served, these experiences have also benefited students as well.
“The MPH program at Regis College was incredible and I would recommend it to any health care undergraduates looking to further their career by influencing the community around them,” says Caitlin Clifford ‘23. “I truly enjoyed my practicum experience at Lawrence General Hospital. I felt like I was really able to make an impact on the community by addressing the social determinants of health and it was a very rewarding experience.”
While learning in a classroom setting can help students understand the principles of public health, real-world experience is essential to ensuring you are ready to take on the complex challenges of today’s healthcare system.
Regis College public health degree offerings give working professionals an accessible online coursework paired with a 270-hour practicum placement. This allows students to apply their online learning in practical settings and enhance their skills in real-world contexts.
To learn more about the program, contact an admissions counselor to find out how an education at Regis can serve your professional goals.