MPH Competencies

MPH Foundational Competencies

These MPH Foundational Competencies, updated in May 2024, were established by the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) as a framework for monitoring the quality of student learning, promoting student success, and advancing the field of public health. The 22 foundational competencies are organized across eight themes of professional practice.

Evidence-Based Approaches to Public Health

  1. Apply epidemiological methods to settings and situations in public health practice.
  2. Select quantitative and qualitative data collection methods appropriate for a given public health context.
  3. Analyze quantitative and qualitative data using biostatistics, informatics, computer-based programming, and software.
  4. Interpret results of data analysis for public health research, policy, or practice.

Public Health & Health Care Systems

  1. Compare the organization, structure and function of health care, public health and regulatory systems across national and international settings.
  2. Discuss the means by which structural bias, social inequities, and racism undermine health and create challenges to achieving health equity at organizational, community, and systemic levels.

Planning & Management to Promote Health

  1. Assess population needs, assets, and capacities that affect communities’ health.
  2. Apply awareness of cultural values and practices to the design, implementation, or critique of public health policies or programs.
  3. Design a population-based policy, program, project, or intervention.
  4. Explain basic principles and tools of budget and resource management.
  5. Select methods to evaluate public health programs.

Policy in Public Health

  1. Discuss the policy-making process, including the roles of ethics and evidence
  2. Propose strategies to identify stakeholders and build coalitions and partnerships for influencing public health outcomes. 
  3. Advocate for political, social, or economic policies and programs that will improve health in diverse populations. 
  4. Evaluate policies for their impact on public health and health equity. 

Leadership

  1. Apply leadership and/or management principles to address a relevant issue. 
  2. Apply negotiation and mediation skills to address organizational or community challenges. 

Communication

  1. Select communication strategies for different audiences and sectors. 
  2. Communicate audience-appropriate public health content, both in writing and through oral presentation to a non-academic, non-peer audience with attention to factors such as literacy and health literacy. 
  3. Describe the importance of cultural competence in communicating public health content. 

Inter-professional Practice

  1. Integrate perspectives from other sectors and/or professions to promote and advance population health.

Systems Thinking

  1. Apply a systems thinking tool to visually represent a public health issue in a format other than standard narrative. 

MPH Concentration Competencies

MPH students will learn the following competencies in their concentration courses.

Community Health Promotion

  1. Assess appropriate social, behavioral, or communication theories, concepts, or models in health promotion research.
  2. Utilize evidence from the scientific literature to inform community health promotion or public health practice.
  3. Critique the study design of public health intervention studies.
  4. Develop tailored evidence-based health promotion strategy targeting determinants of health for a specified community/population.
  5. Assess policy and advocacy methods aimed at reducing health disparities and eliminating inequities using health justice frameworks.
  6. Design strategies for advocating for evidence-based policy changes aimed at reducing inequities and health disparities.

Epidemiology

  1. Evaluate determinants or risk factors of human health and disease.
  2. Design epidemiologic studies to determine risk factors of adverse health outcomes.
  3. Critically evaluate the threats to the validity of epidemiologic studies.
  4. Implement strategies for minimizing bias in epidemiologic studies.
  5. Utilize multivariable models to investigate a public health research question.

Food Security and Nutrition

  1. Apply the basic principles of food selection to support healthy dietary practices amongst individuals or populations.
  2. Apply the principles of food safety practices for in-home and institutional preparation to protect public health.
  3. Analyze nutrition interventions that change policy, systems, or the environment using multidisciplinary evidence.
  4. Evaluate health and nutritional status of individuals and communities.
  5. Identify effective nutrition policy or programmatic recommendations to improve food access and health at the individual and population levels.

Global Health

  1. Compare the major causes of morbidity and mortality of low- and middle-income regions with high-income regions.
  2. Describe the economic, environmental and social drivers of diseases of global health importance.
  3. Apply ethical approaches in global health research and practice.
  4. Propose sustainable and evidence-based multi-sectoral interventions.
  5. Apply monitoring and evaluation techniques to global health programs, policies, and/or outcomes.
  6. Display critical self-reflection, cultural humility, and ongoing learning in global health.

Health Equity and Social Justice

  1. Develop strategies to create systemic change that address poverty, oppression, or inequities.
  2. Assess policies to advance human rights and social justice.
  3. Develop strategies to engage community members in advancing human rights and social, racial, economic, or environmental justice.
  4. Integrate relevant strategies, methodologies, and measures for behavioral health interventions that advance health equity and social justice.
  5. Recommended evidence-informed policies and programs that advance human rights and social and economic justice.

Health Policy

  1. Effectively apply policy analysis skills for supporting policy development, implementation, or evaluation
  2. Develop persuasive writing skills for policy settings.
  3. Analyze multiple stakeholder perspectives to achieve optimum decision-making in health policy.
  4. Critically evaluate health policies that seek to increase healthcare access, improve quality, or reduce cost
  5. Utilize statistical methods to aid in health policy and management decisions

Public Health Practice

  1. Apply multi-disciplinary systems thinking to understand the impact of public health emergencies on health outcomes and inequities. 
  2. Explore legal and regulatory actions to improve and protect the environment and the public’s health.
  3. Utilize evidence from the scientific literature to inform community health promotion or public health practice. 
  4. Apply principles of effective project management in public health practice. 
  5. Analyze how public health strategies can be utilized in public health practice to decrease health disparities in a targeted area. 
  6. Recommend evidence-informed policies and programs to address current or emerging public health problems among specific populations.