Doctoral Degree in Community Health and Health Behavior
Program Description
Many pressing public health problems involve community level factors and factors related to individuals’ health behaviors. Thus, improving public health requires understanding and addressing community and behavioral factors that impact health and wellness. The core focus for the Ph.D. program in Community Health and Health Behavior is understanding factors that influence individuals’ health behavior choices, the role of the community in the onset and solutions to public health problems, and developing ways to use principles of community health and health behavior to improve the public’s health. The doctoral program in Community Health and Health Behavior seeks to train individuals in a dynamic, multi-disciplinary approach to understanding and enhancing health at the individual and community levels through rigorous didactic coursework, as well as directed and dissertation research.
Students in the Doctoral Program will achieve substantial mastery of the relevant behavioral and social sciences, and will gain a firm footing in quantitative and qualitative research and evaluation methods and biostatistics. Graduates from the Ph.D. program in Community Health and Health Behavior will be prepared for careers in areas including, but not limited to, three broad categories: 1) academic institutions, 2) government agencies, and 3) private/non-governmental organizations.
This program will enable graduates to conduct research on behavioral and community factors influencing disease prevention and health promotion as well as develop, implement, monitor, and evaluate public health programs addressing behaviorals and community health.
The Ph.D. training program in Community Health and Health Behavior is designed to enable students to do the following:
1. Demonstrate broad knowledge of the interactions between community and behavioral, biological, cultural, environmental, healthcare, policy, and socioeconomic factors as influences on public health.
2. Demonstrate broad knowledge of the utility of and challenges to implementation of interventions to impact health behaviors and community health.
3. Understand and apply the skills essential to collaborating with the community in identifying health-related needs, developing study designs and conducting community-level research.
4. Demonstrate depth of knowledge within a specialty area in community health and health behavior.
5. Apply ethical principles to research and professional practice.
6. Apply a core set of methodological skills relevant to community health and health behavior research, needs assessment, and monitoring and evaluation of public health programs.
7. Conduct data analyses applicable to community health and health behavior research and/or monitoring and evaluation of public health interventions.
8. Design and conduct original community health and health behavior research.
9. Communicate research ideas and findings to scientific and lay audiences.
10. Critically evaluate the development, implementation, and utility of public health policies and programs designed to improve community health and health behaviors.