Distinctive Curriculum
The hybrid MPH curriculum 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 hybrid MPH program. All students take the same course together as cohort.
Online MPH Course Descriptions
Course descriptions by year are provided below. Most courses are offered in 3-5 week blocks in each term (summer, fall, winter, spring). Students are required to attend all three on-campus periods in August, December, and March.
To see the specific dates by term for each course, view the full academic calendar
Year 1 Courses
PH 201:
Public Health Foundations
(0.25 unit)
Public health is what we do as a society collectively to assure the conditions in which people can be healthy. This course introduces students to the broad landscape of public health and goes a step further to population health in discussing partnerships between health care systems, government agencies and other organizations to improve the health of the public. Modules in this asynchronous course introduce students to the profession and science of public health, communication with diverse audiences, factors related to human health, and the structure of public health and health care systems. The Foundations course is 0.25 units with an additional 0.10 unit of course work on responsible and ethical conduct of research
PH 203:
Health Systems
(0.50 unit)
Improving population health requires understanding of health systems. This course identifies the challenges facing health systems and how different countries address them (or not) through their specific approaches to the financing, organization, delivery and oversight of their health systems, emphasizing systems thinking and payment systems.
PH 205:
Bio-Psycho-Social Determinants of Health Equity
(0.40 unit)
This course will explore the biological, psychological, sociological roots of population health -- including economic and political inequities. These considerations will be linked to the pathways by which they influence choices, behavior, and decision-making that lead to poor health outcomes. We will also explore the role of cognitive bias, structural bias, racism and poverty, as they contribute to health disparities. Students will use these principles in conjunction with standard health models to reflect on readings and health inequities for a particular health issue.
PH 207:
Inferential Methods & Measures
(0.50 unit)
This course uses a weekly “determinant of health” theme to introduce a range of study designs and measures commonly used to explore behavioral, environmental, socioeconomic, and healthcare-related questions. The 4-week course covers observational and interventional designs – from cross-sectional surveys to randomized trials -- and explores the calculation and interpretation of key measures in health fields – from dichotomous measures of events to continuous measures of laboratory results. Through repeated application to different designs each week, students hone skills for critically appraising the methods, measures, findings and conclusions of published examples, and gain appreciation for how each design and measure impacts the validity of causal inferences. The M&M course prepares students for future study of epidemiology and biostatistics, while reinforcing preceding content from PH 205 Determinants of Health and Inequities.
PH 209:
Introduction to Improvement Methods
(0.40 unit)
This course develops systems thinking in health care and public health. Students will be introduced to various perspectives on healthcare services: coproduction of health and health care, shared decision making, and making change in complex systems. The course begins by defining quality in health systems, including the STEEPE framework (safety, timeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, patient-centeredness, and equity) with a focus on medical errors. Students will compare approaches for quality improvement and their capacities to transform the quality, safety, equity, and value of healthcare.
PH 210:
Epidemiology of Health & Healthcare
(0.625 unit)
The “Epidemiology of Health & Healthcare” course is designed to equip students with the knowledge, skills, and shared vocabulary needed to recognize a wide range of study designs used to evaluate public health questions, and to critically assess the relevance and validity of their conclusions. In doing so, the course provides students with a framework for further learning and application, whether it be moving on to biostatistics and advanced methods courses, using data and/or literature to make persuasive policy arguments grounded in awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of the available evidence, or designing and implementing high quality studies of their own in which sources of bias are minimized and limitations to the conclusions are thoughtfully acknowledged.
PH 212:
Biostatistics: Interpretation & Appraisal
(0.625 unit)
Being a critical reader of the literature in health fields is essential for evidence-based action and requires appraisal of measurement and inferential statistics. Measurement can describe a situation or result, while inferential statistics can quantify the uncertainty inherent in making a quantitative inference about a population from a sample. At the end of this five-week course, students will be confident, critical readers of the literature; have a shared vocabulary about basic statistics; and have skill in conducting and interpreting descriptive statistics, interpreting inferential statistics from hypothesis tests and multiple linear regression, and appraising the validity and generalizability of data and findings.
PH 214:
Introduction to Survey Methods for Public Health and Healthcare
(0.50 unit)
This course introduces students to the use of survey methods in public health and healthcare. Students will learn basic principles of survey study design and data collection, focusing on evidence-based designs such as the tailored design survey approach. Specific activities used to learn survey methods include writing and critiquing survey questions, evaluating survey formats, and designing survey studies, including sampling, survey mode and recruitment based on the study question, context and target population.
PH 218:
Introduction to Qualitative Methods in Public Health Practice
(0.50 unit)
This course will provide students an overview of qualitative methods in public health, with an emphasis on applied skill development. Students will learn the theoretical underpinnings and appropriate applications of qualitative methods in public health practice. We will then turn to principles of qualitative study design, including developing qualitative research questions; identifying sampling strategies and open-ended data collection techniques; analyzing and interpreting text-based data; and using standards for reporting qualitative findings. Students will gain hands-on practice with semi-structured interviewing, qualitative data coding and thematic analysis, and the presentation of qualitative data.
PH 224:
Enhancing Communication & Teamwork
(0.25 unit)
Working effectively in public health depends on our ability to communicate clearly, to motivate and manage teams, and to engage effectively in conflict. As a public health practitioner, you will have difficult conversations and negotiate conflict everyday; you will learn how to elicit others’ perspectives identify others' interests, and both give and receive constructive feedback. Each session will include a brief didactic and discussions, in addition to interactive exercises and simulations done in pairs and small groups. You will receive individual coaching and regular feedback.
Year 2 Courses
PH 216:
Medical Care Epidemiology
(0.50 unit)
Almost a half century after John Wennberg’s seminal Science paper, the field of medical care epidemiology and the investigation of health care variation continues to inform public policy and identify opportunities for health system improvement. This five-week course highlights the theories, methods, findings, and associated remedies, which are contrasted with the more familiar field of classical epidemiology (i.e., patterns of health and disease). This course requires a high level of student engagement during class. Course talks are pre-recorded and are viewed along with assigned readings prior to classes. Class time is primarily reserved for structured discussion of the course content in small groups and with the whole class; a portion of class time is also set aside for student questions. Specific assignments are: reading/video quizzes, pre-class worksheets requiring short answers and essays, and a final paper. Class engagement and participation is mandatory and self-evaluated by each student.
PH 233:
Applied Improvement Methods
(0.40 units)
This course builds on PH 209 “Introduction to Improvement Methods.” It will provide opportunities to apply selected improvement methods in real-world small systems. Building from the tenet that equity is foundational for quality, the course will explore the important roles of measurement, effective collaboration, coproduction, and understanding of context, and change management in improving public health and health care using case studies and examples from the literature.
PH 242:
Health Services Administration
(0.625 unit)
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 and be effective leaders in the evolving health care market. This course will teach students the basic principles of financial and managerial accounting and how to make a business case for a program or innovation.
PH 238:
Leading Change in Health Policy
(0.50 unit)
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 225:
Public Health Impacts of Climate Change
(0.25 unit)
Course description forthcoming.
PH 252:
Health Policy
(0.50 unit)
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the health-policy making process and examine how it is shaped by legislation, regulations and the courts. After understanding the process, students will choose a policy topic and begin to build a strategy for making the change they want to see happen. Each course assignment leads up to the final project, which is a policy advocacy strategy that includes: an analysis of a policy issue, a summary of relevant research, a stakeholder analysis and management plan, a metrics-based evaluation plan, and prepared written and oral communication points. The final deliverable puts all the pieces are together, so each student will have created a map to manifest their desired change.
PH 256:
Strategy for Population Health
(0.40 unit)
In a context of shifting reimbursement models, an evolution from volume to value, and increasing revenue and cost pressures, managing for program outcomes and financial soundness has become ever more demanding. The goal of the Strategy for Population Health course is to enable students to make value enhancing decisions and to be effective leaders in the evolving health and healthcare market. Building on financial skills, this course develops strategic thinking skills, which are critical for achieving those goals. Specifically, strategy describes what a health and healthcare delivery system should be doing in order to determine: where it’s going and how it intends to get there. The strategy modules are intended to help students recognize, develop, articulate, and implement strategy; and to expose them to a broad range of strategies for re-designing healthcare delivery and public health.
PH 220:
Anchor Institutions and Population Health
(0.50 unit)
This course will introduce students to ways that Anchor Institutions such as health systems and institutions of higher education can intentionally adapt their existing business functions to address disparities in social, environmental, and systemic/structural drivers of health.
PH 222:
Ethics in Health and Healthcare
(0.50 unit)
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.
Courses That Span Entire Program
PH 261/262/263/264:
Practicum and Practicum Intensive
(3.75 units)
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.
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Bio
Meghan Longacre is 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.
More recently, Meghan served as the director of the Hybrid (online/on-campus) Master of Public Health program at The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice. She currently teaches the Qualitative Research Methods short course in the Hybrid MPH program. In addition, she is the co-Course Director for the “Practicum” series of courses (PH261-PH264), which combines the Applied Practice Experience and Integrated Learning Experience requirements for the Hybrid 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
(3.75 units)
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:
Introduction to Survey Methods for Public Health and Healthcare
(0.50 unit)
This course introduces students to the use of survey methods in public health and healthcare. Students will learn basic principles of survey study design and data collection, focusing on evidence-based designs such as the tailored design survey approach. Specific activities used to learn survey methods include writing and critiquing survey questions, evaluating survey formats, and designing survey studies, including sampling, survey mode and recruitment based on the study question, context and target population.
PH 161:
MPH Internship
(4)
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.
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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 curriculum committee, and also serves as a board member for the Montshire Corporation at the Montshire Museum in Norwich, Vermont.