What Will I Learn In a Master’s In Public Health Program?

Public health is a special field of medicine that mixes the scientific treatment of disease with a broader concern for safety standards within a community. The goal of public health is to promote health and better living through personal choices, and it differs from other branches of illness-related science in that its designed to be preventive, attacking the problem before it gets out of hand, rather than curative. As a result, the things you'll learn in a master's in public health program will all revolve around that goal, and help you better understand how to monitor the health practices of a community, whether local, state, or nationwide.

There are many different fields and concentrations within the broader area of public health, and you'll have a chance to study them all in a master's program, typically with an emphasis on one or two in order to help shape your career. One of the big components of the field is environmental health, which deals with a host of issues related to keeping the world around us free from dangers and toxins. For instance, air quality, waste/trash management, water quality, and even noise control are aspects of environmental health that are taught as part of a master's program. You'll also study the related fields of epidemiology and biostatistics. Epidemiology involves the study the cause of disease, and is also used in investigating the social and demographic trends behind outbreaks of things like influenza. Biostatistics applies raw information gathered about a community or group of people in order to draw conclusions and better understand what's happening to them in regards to their health, and how they can improve their lives.

Other areas of public health include administration and management studies, which prepare master's students for roles overseeing things like public health departments and school clinics, and maternal health and nutrition, which are used to improve the lives of pregnant women and all citizens by better understanding the problems facing the current health delivery system and how those might be changed to reduce risk.

The goal of a master's program in public health is to give you the skills needed to implement change on a large scale to raise the standard of living in a given community. Other aspects of medicine target the individual, but public health is designed to affect entire populations, and that's something you'll be able to do with your degree.