Public health 101: Recommendations of the concensus conference on public health education

The concensus report recommends that all colleges and universities offer Public Health 101 as a survey course in general education in the social sciences, built upon a population perspective, providing an ecologic approach to understanding disease causation and prevention, and emphasizing health issues that affect society as a whole as well as vulnerable populations. Although course content will vary depending on faculty and departments leading the course, most introduce students to core topics of public health including biostatistics, epidemiology, environmental and occupational health, health administration, health behavior, health policy, maternal and child health and ethics. Utilizing public health practitioners as adjunct fraculty and/or guest lecturers and mentors and encouraging students to participate in service learning in public health in their communities were also recommended. The goal is to develop an educated citizenry by introducing students to the vocabulary of public health, exciting them about the field and giving them tools they would otherwise not be exposed to as undergraduates. Learning outcomes for the course include being able to: describe the history and key features of public health; explain the concept of population health, the ecological basis of public health and conceptualizations of health status across populations; explain what it means to foster a healthy society including the impact of behavior and impact and control of environmental factors on health. A curriculum framework for Public Health 101 and guiding principles from the ASPH will be presented.