Infusing the spirit and practice of public health into the undergraduate curriculum: Explicit and stealth strategies for encouraging the public health imagination among 21st century students

Important initiatives in recent years provide new angles from which to approach both explicit and stealth strategies to infuse public health values, methods, and potential through the curricular and co-curricular dimensions of undergraduate education. Key among those developments are the Institute of Medicine's 2003 call to introduce all undergraduates to the core concepts of public health, the LEAP (Liberal Education and America's Promise) initiative of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), and the public health learning outcomes of the AAC&U/Associated Schools of Public Health Educated Citizen and Public Health project. The products and visibility of these initiatives, and the credibility of their sponsoring organizations, provide unique leverage for stimulating public health interest, engagement, collaboration, and outcomes across diverse elements of the university. These opportunities are particularly well suited to the sensibilities of 21st century students and contemporary challenges facing academic institutions. Incorporating examples of effective strategies and student voices, we describe the efforts of a small Health Science Department, home of a CEPH accredited MPH program for over 40 years, to infuse and align core values and methods of public health and social justice throughout the undergraduate curriculum and co-curricular activities of a large, culturally diverse, meso-urban comprehensive university. Points of collaboration, surprise partners, and contextual factors found in other academic settings will be emphasized, along with lessons learned and great ideas that didn't quite work (yet). The critical, supportive roles of communications technologies, community engagement, concerns for sustainability, and the diversity of “the millennials” will be discussed.