There is no doubt public health has risen to the forefront of our minds amidst the coronavirus pandemic, persistent inequalities in health care, and the growing environmental threats. These challenges require an interdisciplinary approach prioritizing the well-being of entire communities and drawing upon the expertise of diverse thinkers. The University of Puget Sound recently announced a new Master’s of Public Health Program to rise to these challenges. Elements Magazine had the opportunity to engage in the following conversation with Dr. Cara Frankenfeld, the director of this new program officially launching in the Fall of 2021.
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What was your and the university’s motivation for launching a public health program?
The university developed the MPH program with goals of aligning with existing community- and service-centered graduate programs on campus, responding to student interest for public health-related curricular content, and meeting a regional need for quality public health care through well-trained professionals.
What are some characteristics of this program prospective students should be aware of? What could a student expect?
The program aligns with Puget Sound’s institutional mission and philosophies about fostering critical thinking, apt expression, social justice, and community engagement. Students can expect to have the opportunity to engage with faculty experts in public health in small classroom settings and will complete experiential learning in the form of an internship that aligns with each students’ career goals.
What makes this program unique from other public health programs? Are there aspects you are particularly excited about?
The Puget Sound program has particular focus on social justice, and students who graduate from the program are expected to be able to: evaluate how environmental and social influences contribute to health and health inequities in populations; compare causes of morbidity and mortality across economically and geographically different world regions; develop culturally appropriate strategies to improve health and minimize disparities in populations; synthesize data and literature to identify health disparities in populations; and, demonstrate high-quality writing for public health-related audiences.
What are the characteristics of a successful candidate for this program? Are you seeking specific undergraduate backgrounds?
Public health focuses on influencing health at a population level, and people who like to think about population-level and systems-level solutions to problems will be successful. Successful students can also enjoy working with diverse populations and can integrate information across a variety of fields, such as math, science, sociology, communication, and ethics. Successful students can come from a variety of undergraduate backgrounds. Some students find it helpful to have taken courses in human biology or physiology and statistics at the undergraduate level, but these are not required for admission to the Puget Sound program.
How is the field of public health similar and different from many other sciences?
Public health is focused on influencing health at the population level, which is different from clinical fields in which a professional is often working with a single individual at a time. Public health often requires an interdisciplinary approach in order to be successful. For example, successful programs to reduce opiate use in communities often require successful collaboration across public health professionals, medical professionals, social services, and law enforcement.
Public health has been at the front of many of our minds this year. What are some ways the program or the field has shifted as a result of the pandemic?
The need for good communicators in public health has been highlighted in the past year. It is important to be able to develop clear messages that can be easily understood across a variety of audiences. The importance of systemlevel or policy-level interventions for public health has also been highlighted. For example, we can see that geographic regions that implemented stronger and swifter lockdown strategies with additional financial and social support to their citizens to stay home have been much better able to contain COVID19. The importance of cultural competence and interprofessional collaboration has also been highlighted. If people cannot pay their rent or put food on the table because their job has been lost, their top priority is getting a job, not infection control. Addressing this is an interdisciplinary challenge. COVID19 has also highlighted the stark realities of racial and social inequities in health.
What are some of your primary mechanisms for collecting data and conducting research? How does public health data affect the decisions being made around us? What are some of the many ways this research matters?
Data to inform public health is collected in a variety of ways. There are existing systems for data collection such as vital statistics to collect data on births and deaths, registries such as cancer registries, notifiable disease reporting for particular infectious diseases, and on-going surveys of health. Researchers can also develop new studies to test particular hypotheses. Data is used to inform decisions about policies or programs. For example, public health officials make recommendations about policies or guidelines about business openings and social interactions during a pandemic based on data about spread, incidence, and mortality of the disease. Politicians and policy makers then use these recommendations, along with recommendations from other parties, when implementing policies.
How do the fields of public and environmental health inform each other?
Environmental health is considered a subfield of public health, and is described as a discipline that looks at different factors in the environment and tries to understand the role of these environmental factors in the health of individuals and populations.
