Who cares about our society’s health needs? Behavioral sciences specialists, health educators, and community health advocates promote a community’s health by assessing health needs, designing interventions to prevent disease, and using research to develop and improve health outcomes.
In the Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences (BCHS), our focus is on creating healthy communities. BCHS applies research on the dynamics of health behavior change to improve community health outcomes. We specialize in the prevention of disease; the promotion of health; and the development and engagement of communities, which encompasses assessment and program planning and evaluation. And we’d like you to join us.
As a degree or certificate program student, you’ll not only receive training in one of these specialty areas, you’ll get to apply that training while working with faculty members and fellow students to promote values of cultural competence, tolerance, and social justice in our local communities. Working together, we can affect real change and move toward eliminating health disparities./p>
Whether you’re planning a career as a health educator for a community-based program or as a research analyst in a government agency, a degree or certificate from BCHS will prepare you to work in practice, research, teaching, or training, particularly with a grassroots, nonprofit, philanthropic, or governmental organization.
Choose from a Master of Public Health (MPH) or a doctoral degree in public health (PhD, DrPH), or one of the following joint degree programs:
Our renowned faculty is heavily involved in teaching and research in areas such as violence prevention; healthy aging; health equity; maternal and child health; evaluation science, community based participatory research and practice; HIV/AIDS; and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) health. There are many opportunities for you to join them in this research. The faculty also collaborate on community-based projects locally, nationally, and around the world.
We encourage you to explore our web site. Please contact our student liaison, Paul Markgraf, directly with any questions that you have about our program.
We look forward to hearing from you.