School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine: Programs of Study
2008-2009 Academic Year
546
The Environmental Health Sciences major
The Environmental Health Sciences major is designed to fulfill all the pre-med
course requirements. Graduates of this program are eligible to apply for programs
in the health professions, including medicine, dentistry, optometry, osteopathy,
podiatry, and veterinary medicine and are also qualified to sit for national
certification which will enhance their advancement and employment
opportunities.
This major emphasizes recognition, evaluation, and control of environmental
health problems. This includes application of basic environmental health
principles to problem solving, use of laboratory and quantitative methods to
generate and evaluate environmental health data, and use of computer technology
to calculate, analyze and display data.
The Global and Community Health major
The Global and Community Health major educates students in the biologic and
behavioral determinants of important public health problems in both developed
and developing countries and discuss disease prevention strategies at the levels of
communities and populations. Students will learn how knowledge of both the
biological sciences and the social sciences (such as economics, psychology, and
sociology) can be applied in developing public health policies and in planning,
implementing, and managing prevention programs. Specific competencies
include:
Describe biologic mechanisms of disease
· Identify the diseases of greatest public health importance
in both developed and developing countries and the biologic and
behavioral determinants of those diseases
· Describe social and economic forces that influence health-related behavior
and health
· Identify different approaches to disease prevention and
plan disease prevention strategies
· Understand processes for implementing, managing,
monitoring, and evaluating public health programs
· Define policies that can benefit the health of populations
Students who plan to attend medical school should meet with their academic
adviser during their first semester to ensure that premed requirements will be met.
The Health Informatics major
The Health Informatics major prepares students for a variety of careers within
public health, other health sciences, and in careers requiring quantitative skills
that are outside the health field. Students develop analytical skills valuable for the