Program Competencies

The epidemiology track provides students with the skills necessary to analyze public health trends, design and implement studies, and interpret the results for policy and program development. They also learn to investigate disease origins, and prevention and intervention strategies at the individual and societal levels. The program prepares graduates to take on leadership roles in clinical and population-based health research in government, health care institutions, and private industry.

In addition to the MPH-required coursework in health policy and management, socio-behavioral health, and occupational and environmental health, students take epidemiology track-specific coursework in epidemiology, biostatistics, and clinical outcomes research. Students are required to take two elective classes in specialized areas of epidemiology. Electives are available in infectious disease, chronic disease, molecular, genetic, and environmental and occupational epidemiology.

• Describe a public health problem in terms of magnitude, person, time, and place.

• Calculate basic epidemiological measures.

• Evaluate the strengths and limitations of epidemiological studies.

• Interpret results of statistical analyses found in public health studies.

• Critically synthesize the public health research and practice literature for a selected health topic.

• Conduct an epidemiological and biostatistical data analysis.

• Distinguish between a statistical association and a causal relationship using appropriate principle of casual inference.

• Identify appropriate methods of study design, analysis, and data synthesis to address population-based health problems

• Identify circumstances under which non-randomized (observational) designs are the best approach to addressing important health-related knowledge gaps.

• Recognize the assumptions and limitations of common statistical methods and choose appropriate approaches for analysis.

• Use tabular and graphical methods to explain model results.