Public health as public good

The founders of UND’s Grasp of Public Well being program mirror on its 10-year anniversary

Editor’s word: This story initially appeared within the Fall 2022 subject of North Dakota Drugs.

By Brian James Schill

“Our college students are concerned in every thing that we do. The whole lot. And that’s been a precedence for us for the reason that starting.”

For Cristina Oancea, Ph.D., an affiliate professor within the UND Faculty of Drugs & Well being Sciences Grasp of Public Well being (MPH) program, the insistence that college students be concerned in virtually each facet of public well being work — from contact tracing to epidemiology to policymaking to advertising and marketing — is what makes it such a particular place to be.

“The placements that our college students get, oftentimes even earlier than commencement, are unimaginable and the results of what these organizations see our college students doing right here. They get presents instantly,” she says with a smile. “Plenty of occasions we’ll rent college students as graduate assistants, after which, earlier than you already know it, somebody just like the North Dakota Division of Well being desires them. That story has occurred so many occasions.”

Simply ask Katarina Domitrovich.

“I began out as a contact tracer for UND’s workforce with the state within the first days of COVID-19,” says the Well being Fairness Coordinator for the North Dakota Division of Well being. “The connections I made in that position, the UND MPH program, and my expertise working for UND in a public well being place allowed me to step into my present position with confidence and with instruments in my toolkit to succeed and serve North Dakotans nicely.”

The MPH program at UND celebrates its tenth anniversary this educational yr. In these 10 years, this system has graduated greater than 100 well being professionals, virtually all who’ve gone on to get doctoral levels, publish in main journals, handle COVID-19 outbreaks on the state stage and tackle issues like substance use issues, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted infections and suicide of their native communities — amongst many different public well being priorities.

At first

“Over time, we’ve seen super scholar progress,” provides Ashley Bayne, MPH program supervisor. “For a number of years we’ve had a 100% employment price for our alumni, which is implausible. The necessity for public well being usually has grown over time and I feel particularly now [post-COVID], folks know that.”

However it wasn’t at all times so. Whereas not essentially underneath assault, public well being as a career was in a really completely different place ten years in the past. A lot of the developed world at the least felt that the majority communicable ailments had been contained and that communities understood the worth of issues like sanitation, sober driving, and seat-belt use. Likewise, tobacco use was on the decline.

Then got here the opioid epidemic, the Flint, Mich., water disaster, renewed debates over gun violence in america, and will increase in suicide amongst many age cohorts—all of which contributed to a decline in life expectancy in America by 2019.

Topping all of it off was, in fact, COVID-19, which as of this writing has claimed a couple of million lives within the U.S. alone.

All of this, says Oancea, has contributed to the immense curiosity in public well being applications not solely at UND, however throughout the nation in recent times. As such, what started in 2012 as a small program — fewer than 10 enrolled college students — has grown to 1 with greater than 80 present college students.

Having arrived at UND in 2013, Oancea, an epidemiologist by coaching, admits to taking delight in serving to form the 10-year-old program virtually since its inception.

“I liked the truth that I used to be going to be among the many pioneers, creating this system,” continues the researcher, who noticed the chance to construct additionally the North Dakota Most cancers Registry with UND’s Dr. Mary Ann Sens too good to overlook.

So she drove up from Memphis, Tenn., the place she had been doing postdoctoral work in most cancers epidemiology at St. Jude Kids’s Analysis Hospital, and set to work serving to this system implement what it had chosen as particular tracks in inhabitants well being analysis and analytics and well being administration and coverage.

“And I can proudly say that we’ve an incredible MPH program with the group that we’ve, and we’ve managed to develop over time,” Oancea says.

Such progress {and professional} foci had been targets of this system’s founding director Dr. Ray Goldsteen, who alongside together with his spouse, Dr. Karen Goldsteen, guided this system from 2012 to 2018 and achieved its first accreditation by the Council on Accreditation for Public Well being (CEPH) in 2016.

“Primary, we felt that in all areas — city or rural — folks wanted robust expertise in analytics,” says Ray, who spoke with North Dakota Drugs by way of telephone from his residence in California. “So, we emphasised analytics and made that one of many main options of the curriculum, and started working with college students, serving to them obtain their targets.”

Staff Goldsteen began instantly constructing partnerships with neighborhood companies the place college students would possibly find yourself.

“Some of the thrilling issues for me was the connection we had with the neighborhood,” continues Ray, citing relationships he cultivated with native policymakers and well being suppliers. “We had great connections with Altru Well being System, the Grand Forks Well being Division, and different well being and repair neighborhood organizations in Grand Forks and the state.”

Educational partnerships

So right here this system is, one decade in, with dozens of enrolled college students of all ranges in its a number of tracks.

A part of what has made this system at UND so profitable, say each Goldsteens, are the educational partnerships it developed throughout UND and the state. These partnerships embrace joint diploma choices—an accelerated B.S./M.P.H., an M.D./M.P.H., and a J.D./M.P.H. — throughout UND.

“We felt that public well being was inherently an integrative career — it’s not standalone,” explains Karen. “It has relied on the abilities of many various disciplines.”

One such integration was partnering with UND’s Nistler Faculty of Enterprise and Public Administration.

“We really had a joint rent in that space,” Ray continues. “A joint school in that space between the enterprise college and our personal college. All these issues we needed to flourish— partnerships with the enterprise college, the legislation college, and throughout the medical college. We had been in search of these alternatives to make it as artistic as we might and hold us from turning into remoted.”

The subsequent decade

And it labored.

On the heels of each COVID and a current reaccreditation by CEPH, the MPH program is grappling with a rise in purposes. Within the throes of the pandemic, says Bayne, purposes to this system had been at one level up 80% from the earlier yr.

For the following 10 years, then, Oancea says that this system is concentrated on rising its recently-added third observe in Indigenous well being and exploring a attainable new observe in environmental well being.

“Phrase of mouth has introduced us to the purpose the place we now have college students from different departments at UND — doctoral college students in corresponding departments — who determined additionally to affix our MPH program as a result of they heard about our success,” Oancea beams. “It’s fairly humbling when college students — and college — from different departments come to our program to study. That may be very encouraging.”

All of this, she says, speaks volumes of this system UND has inbuilt 10 brief years.

“I hold telling our alumni that they’re our ambassadors. If they’re profitable of their careers, that could be a reflection not solely on their laborious work and our work as professors, mentors, and advisers; it’s a mirrored image on the assist they obtained from their households and the colleges they got here from.”

Domitrovich agrees, noting that this system’s school and workers, and Bayne specifically, hardly get the credit score they deserve for constructing an distinctive program.

“[Bayne] and the remainder of the college make sure that the scholars really feel supported all through their time in this system, in a approach I’ve by no means skilled academically,” Domitrovich says. “I actually consider that UND’s MPH program helped me fulfill my vocation, or calling actually, in life to work in public well being.”

In regards to the writer

Brian James Schill is director of the Workplace of Alumni and Group Relations on the UND Faculty of Drugs & Well being Sciences.