Joint MD/MPH program in College of Medicine approved

A centerpiece of the program is the Applied Practice Experience, which includes 120 hours of public health practice working with a community organization or research group. A thesis, or capstone, is started during the public health year and finished during the program’s fifth year, the student’s final year of medical study.

“I see this as a career accelerator for people who want to both practice medicine and practice public health,” Bryant says. “That can mean a lot of different things such as occupational health, health policy, and leading departments, hospitals and health systems. People also can work at the state or county level in public health. There are a lot of avenues that students may be interested in pursuing.”

Charles Doarn, professor in the Department of Environmental and Public Health Sciences and director of the MPH program, was extremely pleased to have the MD/MPH program approved to broaden the current MPH program.

“The addition of this opportunity for our medical students will provide an excellent foundation and enable individuals to address systematic problems with the health care system,” Doarn says. “While health care is in the business of treating illness and injury, it is also part of a larger ecosystem, one that requires competent understanding and effective tools in the five pillars of public health: biostatistics, epidemiology, environmental public health, health education and promotion, and health services management.

“The MD/MPH program will enrich the educational experience for all students by increasing the experiential breadth and diversity of students,” he continued. “Physicians with a dual degree will be able to not only address an individual’s health needs, but also possess a strong foundation on addressing population needs as a whole. By providing additional skills such as leadership, policy development and epidemiology, these future physicians will be better prepared, which benefits the discipline of medicine and society as a whole.”

Bryant says the pandemic has exposed the public to the importance of public health and demonstrated its importance. “Who would have thought that epidemiology would be a cool, sexy topic before the pandemic, but now it’s something where the broader public has a sense of what an epidemiologist does.”

“The idea is to have a program that introduces medical students beyond the MD curriculum to public health ideas, show them how it could benefit their career and really start to foster, advise and mentor them and connect them with people who are physicians practicing public health as well to get them on a path that hopefully fits with their career goals,” Bryant adds.

It is anticipated that about 10 to 15 medical students each year will enroll in the MD/MPH program with hopes that the numbers will grower larger in coming years. The MPH program’s current faculty are expected to be able to handle the initial medical students added to the program. Surveys from last year’s first- and second-year medical classes indicate significant interest in the joint program. Beth Steiner, a medical student entering her second-year at the College of Medicine, is eager to enroll in the new program.