| Degree: | Master of Public Health (M.P.H.) |
| Certificates: | Emergency Management Environmental Health Infection Control Occupational Safety and Health |
| Department: | Master of Public Health Program Building 58, Room 79 (850) 473-7226 http://uwf.edu/sahls/masters-ph |
| College: | Arts and Sciences |
| Semester Hours Required For Degree: Minimum: 42 | |
The M.P.H. provides students with a high quality, multidisciplinary perspective on public health to prepare them to be public health professionals. The M.P.H. degree is the most widely recognized professional credential for leadership in public health. The program core courses provide students with a background in environmental health, epidemiology, social and behavioral sciences, biostatistics, health services administration, and an internship in the public health/health care community. The required and elective courses offer students the opportunity to tailor their degree to best fit their career goals in public health. Public Health is a broad field that is open to students from diverse academic disciplines including health sciences, education, business, social and natural sciences, and others. This is a fully online program.
The M.P.H. Program is allied with several academic centers/certificate programs (see uwf.edu/sahls/certificate-ph/) that broaden the educational opportunities available to students in the program, including the Center for Health Care Ethics, the Alliance for Medical Informatics, the Program in Nursing, the Program in Medical Technology, and certificates in Medical Informatics, Health Care Ethics, Critical Care Nursing, Infection Control, Environmental Health, and others. Close relationships with state public health agencies in the region as well as with area hospitals and the military provide a strong foundation in the health care and public health communities for enhancing and broadening the internship/practicum opportunities for students in the program. Out-of-area students may arrange appropriate internship sites approved by the M.P.H. Curriculum Committee. The UWF M.P.H. Program is accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health.
In addition to the University graduate admission requirements described in the Admissions section of the catalog, the applicant must meet the following minimum departmental admission requirements for regular admission:
In addition, the student must submit:
Applicants with insufficient training in statistics or those who have taken a statistics course more than seven years ago may be admitted conditionally pending demonstration of proficiency in statistics within the first year in the program by:
Students from the Navy and Army Aerospace Medicine Residency Programs entering the M.P.H. will have different requirements, contact the program advisor for details.
Other admission criteria may apply, see below.
Applicants with terminal degrees (Ph.D. or Ed.D.) or advanced professional degrees (M.D., D.D.S., D.V.M., J.D., D.O.) from accredited programs and licensed in the United States may request to waive the graduate admission test requirement but must complete the other admission requirements.
If a student is an international applicant whose native language is not English or the student is from a country in which the primary language is not English, he or she must take an acceptable English proficiency test before applying for admission. Applicants to the University of West Florida are considered international students if they are not U.S. Citizens, dual citizens, or permanent residents. All such students should refer to the International Graduate Admission section of the current UWF Graduate Catalog for information pertaining to international applicants, including requirements for completion of, and scores on the English proficiency test. Other criteria may apply.
Students must earn and maintain an average grade of "B" or better in the M.P.H. Program in order to remain in good standing within the program and in order to graduate from the program. Students must achieve no less than a grade of "C" in any course in the M.P.H. Program. All students admitted after fall 2011 must complete a minimum of 12 semester hours per year.
At the end of their academic program, all students are required to take and pass a Comprehensive Examination with a grade of 70% or better in each of the five core course and five required course domains. See uwf.edu/sahls for additional information. All students are required to satisfactorily complete a supervised Public Health Internship (6 sh) involving field experience in a public health-related area and to submit a written report on research conducted during this capstone experience and to defend the conclusions and recommendations included in their report. The internship course requirement will be met for students with appropriate professional experience or who are currently enrolled in a medical residency program or in the final two years of medical school. No more than 49% of the program requirements for the degree may be taken in traditional business subjects.
Students qualified to enroll in graduate studies but who do not have the required documents by the application deadline date, or those who do not intend to work toward a graduate degree, may complete up to 12 hours as non-degree seeking students. The Academic Learning Plan for programmatic assessment of the M.P.H. Program which includes Student Learning Outcomes, is available at uwf.edu/sahls. Some exams in this program require proctoring at testing sites approved by the course instructor.
All students seeking a Master of Public Health degree must take all of the following core courses:
| HSA 5115 | Health Care Policy and Administration | 3 |
| PHC 5410 | Social and Behavioral Sciences in Public Health | 3 |
| PHC 6000 | Epidemiology for Public Health Professionals | 3 |
| STA 5176 | Biostatistics | 3 |
| PHC 6300 | Environmental Health | 3 |
| PHC 6946 | Internship in Public Health | 6 |
| Total Hours | 21 | |
Students must complete 15 semester hours of required coursework from the following courses:
| PHC 5XXX | Scientific Basis of Public Health * | 3 |
| PHC 6015 | Epidemiological Study Design and Statistical Methods | 3 |
| PHC 6196 | Computer Applications in Public Health | 3 |
| Choose one of the following: | 3 | |
PHC 6XX0 | GIS Applications in Public Health * | |
| Disease Surveillance and Monitoring | ||
| Choose one of the following: | 3 | |
| Public Health Preparedness | ||
PHC 5XX0 | Introduction to Public Health * | |
| Total Hours | 15 | |
Students must choose 6 sh of coursework from the following in consultation with your academic advisor.
| PHC 5XXX | Introduction to Public Health (If not used as a required course) * | 3 |
| BSC 5856 | Bioterrorism | 3 |
| MCB 5273 | Epidemiology of Infectious Disease | 3 |
| PHC 6310 | Environmental Toxicology | 3 |
| PHC 6005 | Disease Transmission in the Urban Environment | 3 |
| PHC 6XXX | GIS Applications in Public Health * | 3 |
| PHC 6251 | Disease Surveillance and Monitoring (If not used as a required course.) | 3 |
| HSC 6528 | Strategies for Prevention of Infectious Disease | 3 |
| HSC 5205 | Public Health Preparedness (If not chosen as a required course) | 3 |
| BUL 5605 | Legal Fundamentals of Healthcare and Public Health | 3 |
| Choose one of the following: | 3 | |
| Introduction to Medical Informatics | ||
| Electronic Clinical Record Systems | ||
| Health Care Quality and Database Management | ||
| Introduction to Bioinformatics | ||
| Choose one of the following: | 3 | |
| Health Economics | ||
| Business Analysis and Decision Making in Health Care | ||
| Theoretical Foundations of Health Care Ethics | ||
| Choose one of the following: | 3 | |
| Fundamentals of Industrial Hygiene | ||
| Occupational Safety and Health in the Health Care Environment | ||
| Fundamentals of Occupational Safety and Health | ||
| * | Course awaiting permanent number from SCNS |
Contact the department (850-474-2650) for a current list of approved electives.
Department: Biology
Method of Instruction: Online
Semester Hours: 9
Students will gain an understanding of disasters and their consequences with a focus on the role of the public health response. The principles of disaster planning, prevention, mitigation as well as the structure and organization of disaster response will be covered. Risk assessment, raid health assessment, and surveillance will be covered. Topics include mental health issues, environmental services, ethical and legal issues, evaluation methods for assessing the mental and public health response, as well as discussion of complex humanitarian emergencies.
| BSC 5856 | Bioterrorism | 3 |
| HSC 5205 | Public Health Preparedness | 3 |
| HSC 6528 | Strategies for Prevention of Infectious Disease | 3 |
| Total Hours | 9 | |
Department: Biology
Method of Instruction: Online
Semester Hours: 12
This certificate is designed to prepare those working in public health, health care, and environmental sectors to deal with the plethora of environmental issues that impact human health.
| PHC 6300 | Environmental Health (formerly Survey of Environmental Problems) | 3 |
| PHC 6005 | Disease Transmission in the Urban Environment | 3 |
| PHC 6251 | Disease Surveillance and Monitoring | 3 |
| PHC 6309 | Environmental Health in the Urban Community | 3 |
| PHC 6310 | Environmental Toxicology | 3 |
| Total Hours | 15 | |
Department: Biology
Method of Instruction: Online
Semester Hours: 12
This certificate is designed primarily for health care workers concerned with infectious disease transmission in the nosocomial environment.
| Choose four of the following: | 12 | |
| Bioterrorism | ||
| Strategies for Prevention of Infectious Disease | ||
| Epidemiology of Infectious Disease | ||
| Disease Surveillance and Monitoring | ||
| Total Hours | 12 | |
Department: Biology
Semester Hours: 9
This certificate is designed to meet the needs of public health practitioners who have collateral responsibility for worker safety and health as well as those assigned primary responsibility. The student will gain a broad based foundation in occupational safety and health that enhances recognition, evaluation and control of workplace hazards. Management tools and skills are identified and explored that can be implemented in the public practice health practitioner’s work environment to bring about improvements in worker safety and health.
| PHC 5351 | Occupational Safety and Health in the Health Care Environment | 3 |
| PHC 5355 | Fundamentals of Occupational Safety and Health | 3 |
| PHC 5356 | Fundamentals of Industrial Hygiene | 3 |
| Total Hours | 9 | |
