Welcome to the field experience component of Walden University’s Master of Public Health (MPH) program. This manual describes the structure and timing of the classroom-based and onsite practicum experiences, and the policies students must follow to be successful. For more information about the public health programs, students should refer to the Walden University Master of Public Health Practicum website.
This manual is intended to provide Walden MPH students with information they need related to practicum policies and procedures. The manual is also intended to serve as a reference for practicum preceptors and other practicum personnel.
This manual refers to the Walden University Catalog and the Walden University Student Handbook for specific information on university policies and courses. These resources can be accessed at catalog.WaldenU.edu.
All students are required to read this manual in detail and adhere to the policies included within. All students must confirm that they have read and understand all the policies in this manual when applying for a field experience. Failure to comply with the policies within this manual is considered a violation of Walden University’s Code of Conduct and Student Professional Conduct Policy and may result in formal sanctions, including, but not limited to, award of a failing course grade, Code of Conduct inquiry, and dismissal from the university. See the student handbook for details.
Note: Walden reserves the right to make program changes as needed to help ensure the highest quality program.
The MPH Practicum manual contains detailed information about field experience requirements and policies for the MPH program at Walden University. All MPH students are expected to read the manual and be familiar with its contents.
Students are subject to the policies and procedures described in the most current Practicum Manual regardless of the academic year in which they were admitted. The university reserves the right to change any provision, offering, requirement, or fee at any time within the student’s enrollment period.
Walden University
The MPH program at Walden University is designed to promote Walden University’s vision, mission, and ongoing commitment to social change. These guiding principles serve as a framework for the program curriculum and outcomes and are included here as a reference.
Vision
Walden University envisions a distinctively different 21st-century learning community where knowledge is judged worthy to the degree that it can be applied by its graduates to the immediate solutions of critical societal challenges, thereby advancing the greater global good.
Mission
Walden University provides a diverse community of career professionals with the opportunity to transform themselves as scholar-practitioners so that they can effect positive social change.
Social Change
Walden University defines positive social change as a deliberate process of creating and applying ideas, strategies, and actions to promote the worth, dignity, and development of individuals, communities, organizations, institutions, cultures, and societies. Positive social change results in the improvement of human and social conditions.
College of Health Sciences and Public Policy
Mission
The College of Health Sciences and Public Policy supports and develops a diverse group of scholar-practitioner professionals empowered to address the social determinants of health and positively impact social change.
Vision
The College of Health Sciences and Public Policy endeavors to improve equity and create healthy communities worldwide.
Master of Public Health Program
Vision
Healthy and equitable communities supported by a diverse public health workforce.
Mission
Assure broad access to quality online public health education to prepare a diverse public health workforce that, through practice, service, and research, creates positive social change leading to healthy and equitable communities.
Goals
Instructional Goal
- Provide broad access to a quality online graduate public health education, especially to nontraditional students and to and those representing underserved populations.
- Produce competent professionals who create positive social change that contributes to decreasing health inequities and improving the health and well-being of diverse communities.
Professional Development
Provide opportunities for professional development of students, alumni, faculty, and the public health workforce.
Research Goal
Engage in research/scholarly activities that advance public health knowledge, decrease health inequities, and improve the health and wellbeing of diverse communities.
Service Goal
Engage in service activities that decrease health inequities and improve the health and well-being of diverse communities.
Core Values
The MPH/DrPH program core values include broad access to graduate public health education, student-centeredness, quality, integrity, diversity, equity, and inclusion. These values guide the work of program leadership and faculty.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the MPH program, students will be able to:
- Utilize culturally appropriate communication skills to convey prevention and intervention strategies used to improve health outcomes among diverse local and global populations.
- Demonstrate an understanding of how research methods, biostatistical data and software, and the epidemiological approach impact the study of patterns of disease, disability, and injury.
- Evaluate biological, environmental, legal, and regulatory factors that affect the health of local and global communities.
- Evaluate the major social, behavioral, and cultural factors that affect the health of local and global populations.
- Appropriately access, interpret, and evaluate public health data that are available through the use of information technology.
- Analyze essential services, systems, public policies, and associated challenges that impact the health of local and global communities.
- Demonstrate skills needed for sound leadership and decision making in public health, including applications of ethics and professionalism.
- Apply health management and systems thinking to public health agencies, programs, policies, and issues.
- Apply the principles of program design, implementation, and evaluation to improve the health of local and global populations.
- Exhibit a commitment to professional and ethically responsible public health research and practice.
Note: Students are required to select at least four of these learning outcomes to be addressed during the practicum experience.
Competencies
The competencies that MPH students are expected to demonstrate by the end of the program and their relationship to the MPH program’s learning outcomes are shown below.
MPH Foundational Competencies
Evidence-based Approaches to Public Health
- Apply epidemiological methods to the breadth of settings and situations in public health practice
- Select quantitative and qualitative data collection methods appropriate for a given public health context
- Analyze quantitative and qualitative data using biostatistics, informatics, computer-based programming and software as appropriate
- Interpret results of data analysis for public health research, policy or practice
Public Health & Health Care Systems
- Compare the organization, structure and function of health care, public health and regulatory systems across national and international settings
- 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
- Assess population needs, assets and capacities that affect communities' health
- Apply awareness of cultural values and practices to the design, implementation, or critique of public health policies or programs
- Design a population-based policy, program, project or intervention
- Explain basic principles and tools of budget and resource management
- Select methods to evaluate public health programs
Policy in Public Health
- Discuss the policy-making process, including the roles of ethics and evidence
- Propose strategies to identify stakeholders and build coalitions and partnerships for influencing public health outcomes
- Advocate for political, social and economic policies and programs that will improve health in diverse populations
- Evaluate policies for their impact on public health and health equity
Leadership
- Apply leadership and/or management principles to address a relevant issue
- Apply negotiation and mediation skills to address organizational or community challenges Communication
Communication
- Select communication strategies for different audiences and sectors
- Communicate audience-appropriate (i.e., non-academic, non-peer audience) public health content, both in writing and through oral presentation
- Describe the importance of cultural competence in communicating public health content
Interprofessional Practice
Integrate perspectives from other sectors and/or professions to promote and advance population health Systems Thinking
Systems Thinking
Apply a systems-thinking tool to visually represent a public health issue in a format other than standard narrative
Concentration (Program-Specific) Competencies
- Assess the implications of a public health intervention on positive social change.
- Recommend strategies to address environmental public health issues and effect positive social change.
- Create communication campaigns to increase awareness and advocacy of health challenges in marginalized groups.
- Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of a local, state, or regional health department or health ministry’s emergency preparedness plan.
- Analyze the effectiveness of response efforts to global health emergencies.