Connecting core courses to practice: An integrative public health project

The Integrative Public Health Project is an interdisciplinary MPH project undertaken by first term students to provide evidence and recommendations to the Ministry of Health of various Caribbean Island nations for the development of policies and advocacy for youth. It combines tools from the core courses of public health: Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Health Policy, Public Health Concepts, and Practice and Leadership. This project seeks to critically examine how the intersection of the courses shape both (1) the understanding of health (broadly defined), and (2) how data are used to develop policies and programs for communities. While the focus of the project is on youth advocacy, it also highlights how health intersects with other axis of culture, government, leadership and social determinants such as sex and gender, and poverty. The outcome of this project is writing a policy brief along with providing policy and program recommendations, it also emphasizes widely acknowledged cross cutting public health competencies.

The purpose of this project is to make direct and indirect connections between the content of the core courses and the practice of public health, in particular making policy recommendations to the various Governments, through a holistic learning experience. This therefore presents an opportunity for students to bridge the gap between theory and practice and achieve a better understanding of the complexity and inter-sectorial nature of public health.

The goal of this presentation is to discuss the process of developing an authentic integrative learning project and to demonstrate its impact on student learning.