Public Health

Overview

Are you interested in a career in a health profession? Or in addressing broad questions of public health? The Public Health Pathway provides an opportunity for students to explore a wide range of health-related careers by combining courses from across the academic divisions with a range of experiential learning opportunities.

Students in the Public Health Pathway will take up questions that go beyond the preparation for a professional degree in the health sciences. From the arts and humanities, what are the ethical and religious dimensions of health? From history and the social sciences, how are ideas and practices of illness and health manifest in different cultures? From the natural sciences, what are scientific tools and bodies of knowledge will help us understand health?

The Public Health Pathway provides students with an opportunity to explore public health careers by combining course work from across the academic disciplines, with a range of experiential learning opportunities that both allow students to apply the knowledge they have already acquired to conditions outside the classroom, and to acquire new knowledge through that experience. Equally important, the Public Health Pathway also provides ample opportunity and encouragement for students to think deeply and critically about how their strengths and skills can most effectively, and meaningfully, contribute to the health of a community. To facilitate this process, students on the Public Health Pathway will have access to a long list of alumni who have gone onto rewarding, fulfilling public health careers.

The field of public health is a crucial facet of the health-care system, and contains a very wide, diverse, and growing range of careers that focus on promoting the health and safety of the community, such as:

Dietitian and nutritionist
Emergency Management Specialist
Epidemiologist
Health Educator
Community Health Worker
Occupational Health and Safety Specialist
Public Health Nurse
Public Health Communications Specialist
Public Health Lawyer
Public Health Policy Analyst

Students who complete the Public Health Pathway will not only have a realistic understanding of the opportunities in the career path they will follow upon graduation, but will also understand the larger historical, economic, and social forces that influence public health. Upon graduation, these students will be well positioned to become effective participants, and ultimately leaders, in promoting community health and well-being.