A K LEO T H E
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2 to THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2013 VOLUME 109 ISSUE 15
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Bachelor’s degree in public health to start next semester NOELLE F UJII News Editor The Office of Public Health Studies will be implementing UH Mā noa’s fi rst Bachelor of Arts degree in public health next semester. “This is kind of a new thing,” director of the Office of Public Health Studies Jay Maddock said. “We’ve seen, in the last 10 years, that public health programs across the country have been starting bachelor’s degrees in public health, and they’ve been really popular with students. So it’s really just a rethinking of public health education and starting it earlier in the student’s academic career rather than later.” The degree will encompass 36 major credits including public health core and elective courses as well as nine related credits in courses like calculus, Math 140 or higher, a statistics course and Psychology 100, according to Denise Nelson-Hurwitz, who will be teaching Public Health 201, Introduction to Public Health, in spring 2014. “The bachelor’s in public health is really focusing on how do we improve the health of populations,” Maddock said. “So this is looking at things like how do we improve clean water, improving health policy, improving health behaviors.”
A BAC H E L O R ʼS I N P U B L I C H E A LT H According to Maddock, the students who come into the degree are going to learn a variety of skills relating to public health. “They’re going to learn how to work with people to help them change their behaviors,” Maddock said. “They’re going to learn about the policy aspect and how
to work with the legislature to change policies to make them healthier. They’re going to learn things about environmental health and how we have sustainability and how we promote a clean environment and how that’s been going on for generations. They’re also going to learn about epidemiology, which is looking at epidemics in populations.” Maddock said students will be able to start the degree program as early as their freshman year. The Office of Public Health Studies has already been teaching some of the courses required for the degree, with some of them dating back fi ve years. These courses include Introduction to Public Health, SeminarGlobal Public Health and Introduction to Epidemiology. Michelle Tagorda, a pre-health adviser and graduate student, said Introduction to Public Health is a course for students to see if they’re interested in the field. “It’s a great exploratory course too for students that are just, you know, who may or may not be sure if they’re interested in public health, but it’s a great chance for them to really divert into getting the kind of concepts that they would need,” Tagorda said. Tagorda took classes in public health as an undergraduate. According to Maddock, these courses will now apply toward the degree. “In general, a degree in public health gives you a nice macro-scale perspective to healthcare,” Nelson-Hurwitz said. “So whereas in medicine and nursing you work one-on-one with a patient, public health really gives you that broader perspective to how healthcare works, how health in general works and really gives more of a community feel.” ISMAEL MA / KA LEO O HAWAI‘I
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Jay Maddock
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