The School of Public Health building, above, located on North Campus.
The health services administration department in the University of Maryland’s public health school opened applications in August for two new master’s degrees in health equity and health policy analysis and evaluation.
While other institutions have offered certificates and programs, this university is the first to offer a master’s in health equity, said Stephen Thomas, the Maryland Center for Health Equity director.
“This new degree is a recognition that the United States is moving in the right direction and that there will be a greater emphasis on population health,” Thomas said. “We at the University of Maryland are very pleased and proud to recognize this new page in our history and to position ourselves now to be the national leaders in training professionals dedicated to health equity.”
The health services administration department worked on the program for nine months before getting approval from the public health school and the Maryland Higher Education Commission. It is also planning to develop a certificate program in health equity for students pursuing other master’s degrees and for federal agency workers outside of this university, said Luisa Franzini, the department chairwoman.
An emphasis on health equity is needed in this country as people face chronic diseases that are preventable with the right access to care, Thomas said, adding that this area in particular could benefit from an increase in health education.
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The health equity degree is an interdisciplinary program that will involve faculty from all departments in the public health school, Franzini said. Students will also be able to take electives across the campus that focus on the socioeconomic factors of health disparities.
“There are courses right now in the department of sociology, African-American studies, Latino studies,” Thomas said. “We hope that this degree is actually a way of bringing a lot of these threads together.”
In addition to the core course requirements for the degree, the program will include overview courses, methods courses, seminars, internships and the opportunity to observe research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, said Dylan Roby, a health services administration professor.
The health policy analysis and evaluation degree will have the same core course requirements but will focus more on analytics and the political system, Roby said.
“We have a lot of faculty interest and student interest in more of the health policy process, analyzing health policy decisions and evaluating policies, so we created this new [Master of Public Health] program to address those needs,” he said.
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The health policy analysis and evaluation program will look at how the health policy process works, how to get engaged in it and how to carry out evaluations of health programs to assess costs, effectiveness and quality, Roby said.
“This is an area that is going to develop quite a bit in the coming years, because even though we’ve approved this large-scale health reform in 2010 — the Affordable Care Act — a lot of the decisions being made are going on at the state level,” Roby said. “States need data and they need analyses to decide how to spend their money, how to design their programs. So I think it’s coming along at the right time.”
The priority application deadline is Dec. 15 for classes beginning in fall 2016.
