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Public Health Sciences

What is it?

Public Health Sciences is a general term given to a wide array of population health related fields including Health Administration, Public Health, Health Policy and Epidemiology.  Epidemiology is possibly one the most well known diciplines in Public Health Sciences. Epidemiology is the study of determinants of health in a large population. For example, epidemiologists investigate the effect of diet or drugs on the risk of different cancers.


Academic Programs

  • MHA- This is a two year degree that focuses on health administration. The curriculum is focused on financial and administrative aspects of health.
     
  • MPH- This is usually a one year program in Public Health Sciences offered mainly in the United States and Canada. Some programs such as the one offered by Harvard allow students to choose different streams. Those with interest in quantitative fields have the option of choosing the stream with a stress on quantitative methods.
     
  • MSC (Epidemiology) - Most Public Health Sciences and Epidemiology progrmas offer a two year MSC degrees. The program usually involves a year of didactics and one year of research wich leads to a thesis defence.
     
  • Ph.D- Most programs that offer Health Administration, Public Health or Epidemiology offer Ph.D degrees. However, Ph.D in more Epidemiology is probably the most common Ph.D amongst the three. Harvard University also offers a Doctor of Public Health degree as well as the Doctor of Science (ScD) degree in Epidemiology.
     

Career opportunities

Public Health Sciences especially Epidemiology is one of the most sought after professions in the health care field. Epidemiologists with Ph.D training can find careers in industry, government and academia. In the older days, epidemiologists mainly focus their work on researching and identifying patterns of diseases mostly infectious diseases. In the last twenty years Epidemiology has branched off in different areas of Health Care. Epidemiologists also identify risk factors of disease, evaluate outcomes with different interventions (drugs, tests, procedures) in large populations or explore patterns of use of different exposures in a population. Epidemiology like many other disciplines has its sub-specialities including Pharmacoepidemiology, Health Outcomes, Cardiovascular Epidemiology and Environmental Epidemiology.