MPH program accredited

Strong start for public health master's program

Published November 17, 2003; Category: DARTMOUTH MEDICAL SCHOOL

After its first year, Dartmouth Medical School's program for the master of public health degree (MPH) has been awarded the maximum accreditation term of five years (through December 2008) from the Council on Education for Public Health.

Launched in the fall of 2002, the MPH program is offered through the medical school's Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences (CECS) to help meet the challenges of improving and reshaping health care. For the 2003-04 academic year, 50 students are enrolled in the program.

"The five-year accreditation for our MPH program is a tribute to the excellence of the Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences and the importance of its activities in enhancing delivery of health care and improving the health of people in our region and in the country," said Dartmouth Medical School Dean Stephen P. Spielberg. "Together with the leadership preventive medicine residency, this program will prepare students for careers to transform and advance health for us all."

DMS awarded the first MPH degrees to 32 students in June 2003. Alumni are in leadership positions within academic settings, government or community agencies or industry.

To qualify for accreditation, the program had to operate for a year with a curriculum that meets the academic requirements of the Council in five core areas: social and behavioral sciences, biostatistics, epidemiology, environmental health and health services administration.

This accreditation is a significant accomplishment for a new program, according to director Gerald O'Connor, Professor of Medicine and of Community and Family Medicine. "It reflects the strength of Dartmouth's evaluative clinical sciences graduate program and its commitment to training and research that meet broad regional and national health needs."

Full-time students can complete the degree in one academic year, culminating in public health research or fieldwork, coordinated by Rosemary Orgren and the New Hampshire Area Health Education Center, which is headquartered at Dartmouth. Some slots each year are allocated to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center's preventive medicine residency program that offers the MPH as part of the physician training.

Faculty members, drawn from Dartmouth and the region, are comprised of physicians and scholars with expertise in the areas that form the impetus for the CECS work in measuring, organizing and improving health and health care.

By HALI WICKNER