OPPORTUNITIES FOR DONORS AND CORPORATE PARTNERS
COVID-19: This changes everything Now is the time for real public health leadership. To transmit knowledge to the next generation—to teach—is vital to creating a healthier world. Boston University School of Public Health (SPH) is at the forefront of making public health one of the most consequential careers of our time. We generate the knowledge that informs the social, economic, political, and cultural conversation. We train the next generation of students to use that knowledge. In carrying out this mission, our students tackle issues of contemporary concern, including obesity, gun violence, poverty, infant mortality, climate change, LGBTQ+ rights, and human trafficking. The pandemic has offered a difficult but indispensable learning experience for our students, whose public health knowledge has proven invaluable to the COVID-19 response. Just one example: In spring 2020, hundreds of them joined the Massachusetts Board of Health’s Academic Public Health Volunteer Corps, helping understaffed local boards of health deal with the crisis. Donor support will help shape the public health conversation among the faculty who teach public health, the students of today, and the public health practitioners of tomorrow. Your investment can help in many ways. Current-use (or “spendable”) gifts go to work right away, supporting student scholarships, cultivating exchange opportunities globally, and launching lifelong-learning programs. Endowed funds, which are permanent resources, can provide scholarship funds in perpetuity and also underwrite our most successful educational initiatives.
TEACH.
Scholarships. SPH, an innovator in public health education, has a new and flexible curriculum designed to prepare students for a range of careers. Students gain a strong, integrated, problem-based foundation in the values, history, methods, and functions of public health, then build skills and expertise in the specialized area they choose. Our students come from more than 45 countries and speak more than 60 different languages, among them Zulu, Russian, Khmer, Italian, Arabic, Bengali, Haitian Creole, and Punjabi. They benefit from the school’s rich, complex mix of backgrounds and perspectives, for diversity is essential to our scholarship—and invaluable to our health as a community. Our students graduate with the openness and crosscultural understanding essential to practicing public health effectively in the 21st century. They are the changemakers of tomorrow, bringing with them strong academic credentials and a passion for social justice, human rights, and public health practice. “I was fortunate to have a full-tuition scholarship,” says Salma Abdalla (SPH’16), who was born and raised in Sudan. “I don’t think there is a better way to spend money than to improve the health of everyone, and that’s what you get when you support students of public health.”
The critical importance of your support. As a Top 10 public health school, SPH competes for students at the highest level. Making the school affordable for all qualified students, no matter what their economic circumstances, is an overriding priority. Scholarship help is critical. For our students, it means the freedom to pursue rewarding careers in areas that are not
generally high-paying ones. For us, it means being able to maintain our proud traditions of diversity and inclusion. Endowed and current-use scholarships, along with stipends supporting travel for internships and practical experiences, are particularly important.
Opportunities to support scholarships include:
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$100,000 to endow a named scholarship for an MPH or DrPH student
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$50,000 to fund a named scholarship for one student for a year
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$25,000 to fund a named scholarship for one student for one semester
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$10,000 to partially fund a named scholarship for one student for one semester
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$5,000 to fund a practicum or internship experience for one semester
Global Network. The Global Network finds ways for students and faculty to participate in research, education, and practice around the world. With your support, Global Network programs will host and send faculty and students in global exchanges, create and sponsor immersive, real-world internships and practica, and help faculty and students fund their own independent projects. All MPH candidates are required to devote at least one semester to intensive practica in the United States or abroad, often in developing countries and addressing underserved populations. From Tanzania to Mexico, India to Peru, and beyond, our students have applied what they learn in the classroom—and learned from the people they work alongside in host organizations, gaining invaluable experience with urgent global health challenges.
Student Pallavi Puri (SPH’20) recently traveled to multiple cities in India to probe the country’s unregulated industry in beedi, or hand-rolled cigarettes. Because of loose regulations, it’s unclear what impact the industry has on its workers, mostly women and children. “The women are exposed to tobacco dust, they don’t use gloves, and many of them work from home with children on their lap,” Puri says. “I wanted to understand how their health and livelihood are affected by this hazardous industry.”
Educating the next leaders. Your gift to the Global Network will help us keep translating knowledge into frontline action. With alumni representing 115 different countries, we aim to expand our reach. Many of our alumni are leaders in major organizations, institutions, and industries and could mentor our students. Your gifts will help us develop new partnerships, supporting more and more students as they learn how to become the next generation of leaders on the global stage.
Opportunities to support the Global Network include:
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$1 million to endow a fund to support student internships, practica, and course projects locally and globally
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$150,000 to fund one cohort’s summerabroad experience
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$10,000 to fund an internship or practicum
Population Health Exchange (PHX). Population Health Exchange (PHX) is SPH’s lifelong-learning initiative. Public health is a dynamic field, and practitioners are entering more career sectors than ever before. To be successful, these professionals need continuing training— both virtual and in person—in new skills, tools, and techniques. The PHX website (populationhealthexchange.org) is the one-stop shop for all lifelong learning at SPH. The flexible curriculum offers options that meet learners’ needs, interests, and schedules with an array of continuingeducation experiences, both in person and online. Topics run the gamut, from lean management in healthcare to what public health can do to make COVID-19 vaccine distribution more equitable. To ensure access to education about pressing public health issues, PHX offers free and low-cost programs.
For alumni, professionals, and more. PHX has several audiences: SPH alumni who want to continue their public health education; professionals who seek refresher training courses; the public health workforce; external organizations; our peer schools; the surrounding Boston community; and people new to the field, from across all sectors, who hope to learn about population health.
These learning experiences come in a variety of formats, including:
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Short, immersive training programs held on campus and online
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Practically Speaking videos with helpful tips and techniques
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Free Associations podcasts
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Public health educational resources and tools
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Customized programs, some offering credentials or digital badges
PHX directly addresses the call from SPH alumni for more flexible access to new skills, tools, and techniques to advance their careers. It also addresses a larger goal of our school: to improve population health through our research, education, and translation efforts, explicitly integrating our academic and practice missions. “Hearing how participants will use these skills in their work makes PHX one of my favorite spots to teach!” says Summer Institute Instructor Amanda Makulec, a data visualization expert.
Opportunities to support PHX include:
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$150,000 to fund one Population Health Exchange educational program led by an SPH professor
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$25,000 to sponsor one named, daylong PHX learning initiative on campus and online, led by an expert on a specified population health topic
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$10,000 to create a grant for five community health organization workers to attend the PHX Winter or Summer Institute
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$5,000 to enrich a scholarship fund that helps send students from middle and high schools in Greater Boston to our summer enrichment programs in population health
The mission of SPH is to improve the health and well-being of populations worldwide, particularly the underserved, through excellence and innovation in education, research, and practice. To ensure that we engage in the issues that advance the public’s health and have an impact on the most compelling public health challenges of our time, we have committed to three imperatives: generating new cross-disciplinary knowledge (think), educating exceptional professionals from diverse backgrounds (teach), and translating our research into cutting-edge practice (do). Critical to our success is the ability to recruit world-class faculty and students; launch innovative programs that respond to global health needs; and embrace all sectors that have a role in shaping the health of the public. Philanthropic support from alumni, friends, and corporations and foundations enables us to do this—and much more.
We encourage you to learn more about our work and ways to support SPH by contacting: Jacoba van Heugten Assistant Dean of Development jjvh@bu.edu O 617-358-3321