School of Medicine

Population Health Promotion

The Population Health Promotion is available on-campus or online. The goal of the Population Health Promotion concentration is to provide students with a solid foundation in the science, theory, and practice of effective health promotion in a population-based environment. The curriculum provides a foundation in the science of behavior change with a focus on real-world application. Students in the concentration gain skills to develop, adapt, implement, and evaluate effective programs, approaches, and messages to achieve a broad range of public health goals from information dissemination to behavior change. The program seeks to instill in students a lifelong commitment to the highest ethical standards of public health practice.

Skills & Competencies

  • Identify stakeholders and incorporate their perspectives into public health interventions
  • Develop qualitative questions for formative research to understand audience perspectives
  • Use behavior change theory to design or evaluate population-based interventions
  • Apply principles of social marketing to promote behavior change
  • Address structural racism and discrimination in public health programs
  • Choose and adapt existing public health programs or interventions for implementation in new settings

Courses required in addition to the core

  • PH 254: Program Planning for Public Health Interventions
  • PH 268: Social Marketing 
  • PH 276: Implementation Science: Bridging the Gap Between Knowledge and Practice
  • PH 290: Qualitative Methods and Data Analysis
  • 12 elective credits