Online Program

290750
Connecting core courses to practice: An integrative public health project


Monday, November 4, 2013 : 9:30 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.

Cecilia Hegamin-Younger, PhD, Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, St. George's University, St. George, Grenada
Praveen Durgampudi, MD, MPH, Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, St. George University, Medical School, St. George, Grenada
The Integrative Public Health Project is an interdisciplinary MPH project undertaken by first term students to provide evidence and recommendations to the Ministry of Health of various Caribbean Island nations for the development of policies and advocacy for youth. It combines tools from the core courses of public health: Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Health Policy, Public Health Concepts, and Practice and Leadership. This project seeks to critically examine how the intersection of the courses shape both (1) the understanding of health (broadly defined), and (2) how data are used to develop policies and programs for communities. While the focus of the project is on youth advocacy, it also highlights how health intersects with other axis of culture, government, leadership and social determinants such as sex and gender, and poverty. The outcome of this project is writing a policy brief along with providing policy and program recommendations, it also emphasizes widely acknowledged cross cutting public health competencies.

The purpose of this project is to make direct and indirect connections between the content of the core courses and the practice of public health, in particular making policy recommendations to the various Governments, through a holistic learning experience. This therefore presents an opportunity for students to bridge the gap between theory and practice and achieve a better understanding of the complexity and inter-sectorial nature of public health.

The goal of this presentation is to discuss the process of developing an authentic integrative learning project and to demonstrate its impact on student learning.

Learning Areas:

Biostatistics, economics
Epidemiology
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Public health administration or related administration
Public health or related education
Public health or related public policy

Learning Objectives:
Evaluate a significant learning experience on student outcomes. Describe a process translating academia into practice. Demonstrate how history, politics, and various forms of social and economic inequalities influence health attitudes, knowledge, behavior, and healthcare relationships and their role in the emergence of disparities. Assess how existing research and data are used to describe and analyze the determinants of health for particular groups, including social, political, and economic factors and relationships.

Keyword(s): Biostatistics, Education

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been a professor of biostatistics for the past 20 years. My research interests are educational assessment, secondary data analysis and substance use. I am presently, a professor of biostatistics at the Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at St. George's University where I also serve as evaluation committee chair and oversee several student service learning projects and work with governments in the Caribbean providing secondary data analysis.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.