Program-wide PhD Competencies
• Discuss and critically evaluate the broad public health literature and literature related to the student's discipline.
• Apply public health concepts in the framing of research questions and design a proposal to address the gaps identified in the student's discipline.
• Explain the principles of research ethics and apply these principles to specific research projects.
• Apply qualitative and/or quantitative techniques to analyze and synthesize data related to public health issues.
• Author a publishable manuscript suitable for peer-reviewed publication as an independent researcher and present to colleagues and professionals in the field.
• Convey public health concepts and methodologies to undergraduate and/or graduate students.
Biostatistics (BIOS)
• Critically evaluate public health and biomedical studies with respect to their design features (i.e., type I error, power), biases in sample selection and retention, and efficiency and correctness of analyses and interpretation.
• Apply appropriate statistical methods and statistical software for optimal design of public health and biomedical research studies.
• Apply appropriate statistical methods and statistical software for optimal analysis of public health and biomedical research studies.
• Provide appropriate statistical interpretation of the results of data analyses of public health and biomedical studies.
• Communicate and teach biostatistical principles and methods to researchers and trainees in public health and the biomedical sciences.
• Understand ethical principles of study design, data analysis and interpretation.
Epidemiology (EPI)
• Critically evaluate public health and medical literature with respect to disease (outcome) measures, measures of association, study design options, bias, confounding, and effect measure modification.
• Interpret descriptive epidemiologic studies in order to develop hypotheses of possible risk factors for a health outcome. • Apply quantitative methods to analyze and synthesize epidemiologic data related to public health issues.
• Design robust observational and experimental studies to address public health and clinical problems.
• Deploy central concepts, methods, and applications of contemporary modeling in epidemiology, including transmission dynamics of infectious, chronic, vector-borne, and sexually transmitted diseases and the manner in which social networks and human behaviors affect those dynamics and their control.
• Design and present and epidemiologic investigation resulting in a publishable manuscript.
Public Health Policy and Management (PHPM)
• Apply appropriate research methods to analyze health policy and management issues and questions
• Synthesize evidence to guide policymaking and assess public policies and programs that promote population health and health equity
• Assess different theoretical perspectives in management and apply these ideas to the identification, analysis and understanding of critical themes and issues in health care and public health.
Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS)
• Apply knowledge from a social science specialization (sociology, political science, psychology, anthropology) to a public health problem.
• Critically assess major theories, trends, and debates in the social and behavioral sciences literature regarding health.
• Develop skills used to choose appropriate research designs and statistical methods for answering public health questions in the field of social and behavioral sciences.
• Design rigorous and ethical research studies that examine theories or conceptual models relevant to the social and behavioral sciences.
• Assess the means by which the social determinants of health create challenges to achieving health equity at the behavioral, community & societal levels.
• Communicate social and behavioral health theories, concepts, and scholarship in oral and written form.