Graduate Course Directory and Schedules

Examines social, behavioral, and environmental community health-related issues and the controversies that surround them. This course will be a recommended prerequisite for all upper-division classes in the major.

The key culminating step for each MPH student is the Integrative Project (IP). Through the IP, a high-quality written product is produced, which we call the “IP paper.” Through the IP paper, students demonstrate their academic learning and public health practice skills through the synthesis of foundational and program competencies and application of those competencies to complex public health issues. The paper will take the form of a substantial written product such as a program evaluation, policy or economic analysis, grant proposal, health promotion or community engagement program plan, publishable manuscript, or other written product that demonstrates integration of three foundational (one must include Foundational Competency #6) and three program competencies. Appropriate types of written products vary by program, type of practice experience (if the two are integrated), and the student’s career goals. We recommend (but do not require) that the IP paper build upon work conducted in the Practice Experience. For example, students may write a high-quality written paper using the findings from a statistical analysis performed in support of a research project that is separate from their Practice Experience.

Learn more about the Integrative Project

Students must attend a PE orientation (via canvas.pdx.edu) prior to registering and are encouraged to attend a PE info session. Detailed information about the PE can be found on the Practice Experience SPH webpage.

PEs are a total of 4 credits and 160 “contact hours.” Students demonstrate 5 competencies via at least two deliverables, as well as submit a learning agreement (the term before PE registration), a midway progress report, a portfolio, and perform an oral presentation.

Biostats students register for BSTA 509PE. PHP students register for CPH 509PE. Epi students for EPI 504PE. ESHH students register for ESHH 509PE. HSMP students register for HSMP 509PE. HP students register for PHE 504PE.

Prerequisite

Consent of PE Coordinator required.

Public health is a problem-solving, future-thinking field tasked with anticipating, preventing and responding to various types of crises, and the field engages with “what-if” scenarios and forecasting in many different ways, including epidemiological modeling, policy creation, and community organizing. As such, it is critical that public health professionals have many different tools to exercise what could be referred to as the “public health imagination,” particularly when facing complex, daunting, and novel crises such as many in the field’s recent history. Science fiction literature – including subgenres of speculative fiction, dystopic fiction, climate fiction, afro-futurism, etc. – very often depicts issues that are within the realm of public health, such as climate crisis, government collaboration, infectious disease spread, and transformations of social conditions under which health and disease are embodied. However, similar to other forms of art and media, science fiction is scarcely utilized or appreciated routinely by public health professionals despite its capacity to inspire, warn, educate, communicate, and contribute broadly to imagining different futures.
Science fiction can fertilize public health professionals’ imaginations in support of diverse forms of public health practice.

This course will explore what public health professionals can get out of deeper engagement with science fiction. Students will read science-fiction texts alongside transdisciplinary literature that help inform potential roles for science fiction and offer tools for public health interpretations. Throughout the course, students will contribute to building a collaborative, emergent understanding of the value of science fiction in a public health context.