You’re going to work hard for your master’s degree. Don’t you think your degree should work just as hard for you? Goodwin University’s Master’s in Public Health (MPH) program is offered in three concentrations, designed to help you take control of your professional career.

In this program, 33 credits are achieved through core course requirements like the Principles of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Research Methods. This rich curriculum prepares students with the fundamentals of public health leadership and policy. The final nine credits of the MPH degree, however, are focused within a dedicated public health concentration. Choosing a concentration helps students align their interests with their public health career goals. The specific and applicable experience of each focus area has so many long-term benefits for the public health professional.

If you are exploring an MPH degree, and interested in the public health concentrations available through the master’s program, you have come to the right place. Below, we break down the three MPH concentrations available online at Goodwin University.

1. Community Health

Individuals who want to implement health programs and interface with the public or community should consider the Community Health concentration. Working as a non-profit director, local policy maker, or public health educator are possible career outcomes. Community health professionals might find work within hospitals, community centers, or government agencies at the local, state, or federal level. The following community health concentration courses will help shape the appropriate skillset:

• Community Health Sciences
• Program Planning, Research and Evaluation for Community Health
• Urban Health and Social Policy

Individuals interested in this career pathway combine interpersonal and communication skills with their knowledge of public health policy and research methods. Social sciences are most important to this public health career path because the cultural makeup of any target community should directly shape public health intervention plans. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) released an article during the first Summer of the COVID-19 pandemic, illustrating the importance of community health workers as a service between individuals and clinical facilities which can be lifesaving. Community health services have better access to people in their homes and neighborhoods than healthcare workers often do. This can mean faster help for people in an acutely dangerous health situation, but hopefully more often, prevention of such a situation by way of a strong community health network.

Community health programs help people stay out of the hospital by promoting healthy choices and by connecting people to the services they need. With an MPH degree and concentration in community health, you could be at the helm of managing programs like these, and potentially making a Medical and Health Services Manager salary of $104,280 annually.

2. Global Health

If tackling big health challenges in developing countries sounds like a thrilling prospect to you, consider the global health concentration of the MPH degree. In the global health track at Goodwin University, you’ll enroll in these concentrated classes, on top of the core curriculum:

• Global Health Issues
• Program Planning for Global Health
• Essentials of Economics and Finance for Global Health

A major motivator for people who work in global health is the opportunity to uphold human rights for vulnerable populations. Besides this humanitarian tilt, global health professionals are interested in breaking down barriers to healthcare access, promoting funding for healthcare programs, instituting education, and striving for the sustainability of healthcare provisions. The World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, and Doctors Without Borders might be household names to you. They are also some of the most major global health providers whose mission and projects are probably of great interest to a global health student!

As with most health-related professions, in global health, one can opt to work on the ground with care recipients, such as an Emergency Management Director, or on data collection in a research setting, such as an Epidemiologist. Consider whether travel and long hours on a project abroad or time spent in a lab or with computer modeling programs make more sense for your life’s sensibilities.

3. Health Policy and Management

While the hands-on practitioners of public health may see change happen face-to-face, behind the scenes, it’s the health policy managers that set up laws and budgets that allow public health systems to work. In the health policy and management concentration at Goodwin University, you’ll receive training in public health law, economics, and diverse applications of health policy through these courses:

• Health Economics and U.S. Policy
• Public Health Law
• Public Health Policy as a Prevention Strategy

This MPH concentration prepares public health professionals for careers in government, non-profit, and medical settings, among other sectors. Individuals with a passion for advocacy work or judicial reform might find policy-making a fulfilling career choice. At the CDC, the policy creation process is developed under continuous evaluation, as these five steps are carried out: problem identification, policy analysis, strategy and policy development, policy enactment, and policy implementation. To gain funding and assign resources, the CDC and other similar public health policymakers must demonstrate the value of the policy change to stakeholders with each step. These are the skillsets that someone who works in public health policy and management will employ on a daily basis.

Choosing the Right Public Health Concentration for Your MPH Degree

Your life is what you make of it, and you can use it to benefit hundreds, thousands, or millions of people in need of public health services. Across the world and within the United States, people feel the strain of poverty, violence, and war, addiction, access to education and jobs, chronic illness, and hunger, just to name a few areas of strife. Public health professionals play a pivotal role in the healthcare eco-system for people encountering these hardships, potentially before a problem occurs. As an access point that’s different than a hospital, public health professionals act heroically.

To learn more about how a concentrated Master’s in Public Health can help you can build your career into one that provides personal, culturally competent, and holistic health services to those in need, we hope that you’ll get in touch with Goodwin University today.