9/4/2018
Solution-Driven & Focused on Systems Improvement: Meet Our New On-Campus MPH Class
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7/18/2018
Distinctive Curriculum
Core coursework in the online MPH program focuses on the development of essential quantitative and analytic skills, foundational knowledge about how health care systems function (or malfunction) and how they can work better. In short, students gain the knowledge and training they need to improve health system performance through quality improvement, leadership, health policy, and research.
Below is a summary of the courses students will take in the online MPH program. All students take the same course together as cohort.
Online MPH Course Descriptions
Students are required to attend all three on-campus periods in August, December, and March. All courses begin during the required on-campus session immediately preceding the online portion of the course. Courses in the Fall and Winter also conclude during a required on-campus session.
Courses That Span Entire Program
PH 261/262/263/264:
Practicum and Practicum Intensive
(12 Credits)
The TDI Hybrid MPH includes a concurrent practicum course that runs throughout the entire program, combining an Applied Practice Experience, or APE (a field study) with an Integrated Learning Experience, or ILE (written culminating project). Students develop and execute their own individual practicum with faculty support, focusing on a specific problem area or question. Skills gained in the program serve to improve health and/or health care, develop or refine policy, or generate new knowledge in a real-world setting. Using systems thinking, qualitative and quantitative methods, along with effective inquiry, student practicums will provide actionable insights and feasible recommendations.
Year 1 Courses
PH 224:
Dealing with Differences: Communication, Negotiation, and Teamwork
(2 Credits)
Conflict is inevitable – we negotiate our differences every day, whether we are public health practitioners, clinicians, administrators or researchers. Working effectively in public health and health care depends on our ability to manage conflict effectively, learn how to understand others’ perspectives and interests, and both give and receive feedback. If poorly managed or avoided, conflict reduces productivity, undermines trust and leads to worse outcomes. If viewed as an opportunity to explore the concerns and different perspectives that others may have, working through these differences can enable individuals and teams to come up with better solutions and work more effectively. Students will learn the basic principles and skills of how to engage effectively with differences and conflicts, understand the strengths and weaknesses of how you tend to approach conflict in your life, and provide you a framework for thinking about both communication and negotiation.
PH 201:
Foundations of Public Health and Health Policy
(9 Credits)
This course will explore core content areas beginning with exploring commonly used health behavior models (e.g., Evans and Stoddart, Social Ecological Model). Emphasis will be on understanding healthcare delivery systems and the linkages to social and behavioral determinants of health. Students will also receive an introduction to research design and program implementation, basic concepts of supply/demand curves as well as an overview of the health insurance marketplace and healthcare payment models, and an introduction to quality improvement frameworks for improving health and healthcare. Students completing this course will be fluent in health care policy language, the systems that govern payment and service delivery as well as the individual and community factors that impact population health. Students will also have the skills to assess quality and applicability of research for use in practice.
PH 210:
Epidemiology of Health & Healthcare
(3 Credits)
This course introduces the basic principles of epidemiology, including formulation of the research question, choice of study subjects, measures of disease frequency, assessment of exposure and disease status, study design (cross-sectional studies, prospective and retrospective cohort studies, case-control studies, and clinical trials), measures of association between exposure and disease (risk ratio and risk difference measures) and causal inference. Taught as lectures and assigned exercises, this course stresses the practical applications of epidemiological techniques.
PH 212:
Biostatistics
(3 Credits)
This course is designed to develop skills for interpreting and appraising statistical information. These concepts are intertwined with considerations of the purpose, structure, strengths, and weaknesses of common study designs as applied in epidemiology. Students will continue expanding and honing their skills for critically appraising the relevance and validity of findings, yet this course emphasizes summarizing data, calculating effect sizes, quantifying random error, and interpreting graphs and tables, effect sizes, and random error. Through readings, exercises, self-assessments, live interactions, videos, and two-way feedback, students will have a range of modalities by which to explore the material and gain greater mastery of the primary content. In addition, the course aims to facilitate continued linkages to other foundational content through the use of examples that explore topics such as environmental and behavioral determinants of health.
PH 214:
Qualitative & Survey Research Methods
(3 Credits)
This course introduces the basic principles of qualitative research design and analysis using grounded theory along with the fundamentals of developing and analyzing surveys. Students will gain experience with interviewing and focus group facilitation, survey design and sampling, data collection, analysis, interpretation and reporting of results. In addition to gaining knowledge about primary research methods, students will be introduced to the use and analysis of data from publicly available national survey data.
PH 233:
Improvement Methods
(3 Credits)
This course explores the knowledge, methods, and skills necessary to effect the continual improvement of the quality and value of health care. Participants will become familiar with the theory of statistical process control and the development of measures for improvement work. Benchmarking and organizational approaches to measurement and improvement will be discussed, and a variety of study designs for improvement work will be explored. Participants will be offered an opportunity to connect that knowledge, and those methods and skills, to their personal life and work.
PH 226:
Introduction to Environmental Health
(1 Credit)
This course engages students in the exploration of major environmental and occupational health issues through application of the basic tools of environmental science including epidemiologic methods, toxicology and risk assessment. Participants will examine the relationship between environmental and occupational exposures and human disease with emphasis on the interface of science and policy, the role of regulatory agencies and environmental risk communication.
Year 2 Courses
PH 222:
Ethics in Health and Healthcare
(1 Credit)
This course is designed to give students an overview of healthcare ethics, including recognizing and responding to contemporary clinical, research, and organizational ethical conflicts in health care. Students will build practical ethical reasoning skills and strategies for dealing with frequently encountered ethics issues, as well as approaches for anticipating and decreasing the presence of ethics conflicts. Emphasis throughout the course will be on critical thinking, real-world application, and ethical decision-making in a professional environment.
PH 216:
Applied Epidemiology
(2 Credits)
Students will build upon the content of previous courses in epidemiology and biostatistics to strengthen their ability to find, analyze, interpret, synthesize and communicate health data. Because epidemiologists are often concerned with the presence or absence of a disease, this course will focus on research questions that involve odds ratios. The course will provide a working knowledge of unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios, confounding and effect modification, two critical concepts in epidemiology. By the end of this course, students will be able to find available health data to address epidemiological research questions, apply appropriate descriptive statistics to summarize such health data, and interpret, synthesize and communicate results to epidemiological research questions that involve odds ratios, confounding and effect modification in writing.
PH 242:
Health Services Administration
(3 Credits)
Recent shifts in US healthcare policy toward reimbursement structures that incent high quality and efficient care shift the focus from volume to value, increase revenue and cost pressures, and push leaders in public health to do more with less. Managing for program outcomes and financial soundness has become ever more demanding. The goal of the Health Services Administration course is to enable students to make value enhancing decisions. This course begins with teaching students the basics of financial accounting and understanding financial statements, then turns to managerial accounting to develop skills related to operational budgeting, capital budgeting, and project budgeting, and then ties these management skills to the student’s own work, focusing on the business case for the Practicum.
PH 220:
Using Data to Inform Decision Making
(3 Credits)
Data are derived from a number of sources, including variable study hypotheses, designs, and analyses. This course will provide leaders with the tools to evaluate these data and to use modeling for the purposes of decision-making. Participants will attain skills in developing and analyzing the findings from structured clinical studies and learn to use those findings to aid in decision-making.
PH 252:
Health Policy
(2 Credits)
This course provides students with an understanding of health policy and financing in the United States. Topics include navigating the policy landscape, analyzing the ramification of various types of policy, assessing existing programs and policy, and understanding the economic and financial considerations of implementing policy.
PH 238:
Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating Change
(3 Credits)
This course introduces the skills and techniques required to research and develop health programs at the community, state, and national levels. Students will be presented with the concepts, processes and techniques used in health program planning, implementation, and evaluation. The students will engage in planning, implementation and evaluation exercises. The course will emphasize the importance of teams and partnerships in successful health promotion programs.
PH 228:
Communication for Health and Health Care
(2 Credits)
This course explores the role of communication in shaping health and health care at the individual, organizational, and community level. From the doctor-patient dyad, to national public health campaigns, communication is critical to improving and changing health behaviors and health outcomes. This course will help you understand how communication shapes the exchange of information, the formation of attitudes and beliefs, and people's health behavior. We also will explore the role of health campaigns and health promotion.
PH 256:
Strategy for Population Health
(2 Credits)
This culminating course will provide students an opportunity to synthesize learning across their program. Organized around case-based learning, students will learn about and apply frameworks for formulating and evaluating strategic decisions, tools for identifying opportunities and evaluating alternative paths, and methods for encouraging innovation.
PH 258:
Comparative Health Systems
(1 Credit)
This course provides an examination of the U.S. health care system through a comparison with other countries. This critique will challenge the student’s view of U.S. health care and will establish a foundation for further inquiry into non U.S. health care systems. Students will be able to identify promising ideas that could be applied to the U.S. Students will also understand generalizable concepts of health systems that are necessary to work or learn in international settings.
IN THE NEWS
ROUND 1 APPLICATION DEADLINE
12.1.2018
CLASS STARTS
8.5.2019
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FACULTY SPOTLIGHT
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meghan.longacre@dartmouth.edu
Meghan Longacre, PhD
Director, Online MPH Program , The Dartmouth Institutemeghan.longacre@dartmouth.edu
AREAS OF EXPERTISE:
Bio
Meghan Longacre is the director of the online master of public health program at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. She is also a child developmental researcher with expertise in the socioecological influences on children’s, adolescents’, and young adult’s health risk behaviors. For the past 12 years, her research has focused on the prevention of childhood obesity. Her current work examines the influence of food marketing on preschoolers’ diet. Meghan has worked with several prominent community organizations, including the Montshire Museum of Science in Norwich, Vermont, and WGBH, the Boston PBS Affiliate, to design and evaluate research-informed curricula to promote energy-balance practices in preschool, middle-school, and high-school settings. She serves on the board of editors for the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, and is a reviewer for NIH’s Time-Sensitive Obesity Policy and Program Evaluation mechanism. As a qualitative researcher, Meghan consults with research teams regarding appropriate use of qualitative methods within child-focused research projects.
Meghan teaches in both the one-year, residential and two-year, online Master of Public Health programs at The Dartmouth Institute. In the residential program, she is the course co-director for PH125, Qualitative Methods Toolbox. She is also the course co-director for PH214, Qualitative and Survey Research Methods, and for PH 261 Practicum, which combines the public health internship and capstone experiences for the online MPH program. Since coming to Dartmouth in 2001, she has mentored numerous undergraduate and graduate students.
She earned a BA in psychology from Rutgers University, and an MS and PhD in family studies and human development from The University of Arizona.
Published Research
Courses Taught
PH 261/262/263/264:
Practicum and Practicum Intensive
(12 Credits)
The TDI Hybrid MPH includes a concurrent practicum course that runs throughout the entire program, combining an Applied Practice Experience, or APE (a field study) with an Integrated Learning Experience, or ILE (written culminating project). Students develop and execute their own individual practicum with faculty support, focusing on a specific problem area or question. Skills gained in the program serve to improve health and/or health care, develop or refine policy, or generate new knowledge in a real-world setting. Using systems thinking, qualitative and quantitative methods, along with effective inquiry, student practicums will provide actionable insights and feasible recommendations.
PH 214:
Qualitative & Survey Research Methods
(3 Credits)
This course introduces the basic principles of qualitative research design and analysis using grounded theory along with the fundamentals of developing and analyzing surveys. Students will gain experience with interviewing and focus group facilitation, survey design and sampling, data collection, analysis, interpretation and reporting of results. In addition to gaining knowledge about primary research methods, students will be introduced to the use and analysis of data from publicly available national survey data.
PH 161:
MPH Internship
(4 Credits)
The public health field internship provides students with an opportunity to apply principles and skills learned in the classroom - the measurement, organization, and improvement of public health care - to real situations in the field. A minimum of 120 hours is to be spent at the placement site during the winter and spring terms. Typically, this internship occurs in the final term of the year, but other arrangements are possible, typically for part-time students, with permission of the course director. Students who have completed their internships prepare and present an overview of their experience at the conclusion of the spring term and complete an exit appraisal of their experience and achievements.
Required for MPH; Not available for MS, PhD, Post-doc or Special students.
Prerequisites: PH 100, 102, 111, 115, 117, 139, 140, 151, and 154 or consent of course directors.
Media
MORE ABOUT PAUL'S WORK
Meghan Longacre serves on the board of editors for the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, and is a study section reviewer for NIH’s Time-Sensitive Obesity Policy and Program Evaluation grants. She serves on The Dartmouth Institute's admissions and curriculum committee, and also serves as a board member for the Montshire Corporation at the Montshire Museum in Norwich, Vermont.