Public Health Practice Postgraduate Program: Preparing academic public health practitioners

The Public Health Practice Postgraduate Program is designed to provide a unique learning experience and pathway into a public health career while increasing public health evaluation and epidemiology capacity and contributing to academic public health practice scholarship. The Postgraduate Program is administered through the South Carolina Public Health Consortium (the Consortium), a joint program of the Arnold School of Public Health (Arnold School) and the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC). Fellows enhance their academic training with public health practice experience while providing evaluation and epidemiology services to practice partners. In addition, fellows work with an Arnold School of Public Health faculty mentor to establish an academic public health practice scholarship agenda. The program ultimately serves as a recruitment tool for the DHEC that encourages successful fellows to apply for permanent health department positions and stay in South Carolina.

Currently fellows are placed within DHEC's Bureau of Community Health and Chronic Disease Prevention, which affords exposure to issues such as heart disease and stroke, obesity, tobacco, diabetes, etc. Upon entering the program, fellows participate in a self-assessment and professional development planning process focused in the areas of evaluation, epidemiology, and supervision. The outcome is an individual development plan to guide the fellow as they garner resources and opportunities to enhance their skills and professional identity. The program nurtures fellows in the development of practice-based research and academic public health practice.