Overview
Graduate Program
Complex public health problems require multidimensional and multidisciplinary solutions. Clark University’s Master of Health Science (MHS) in Community and Global Health, offered through the world-renowned International Development, Community, and Environment Department (IDCE), is ideal for students who are committed to health care as a right, not a privilege, and who believe in social justice and equity for all members of society.
Given the many factors that affect a person’s health, the study of community and global health is by necessity transdisciplinary, combining natural science and technology with social science and policy. Areas of focus include social determinants of health, spatial analysis and health, health policy, and community-based participatory research.
Graduate Requirements
The MHS curriculum offers some flexibility in sequencing of courses and areas of concentration. Faculty will work with individual students to address their specific needs including, if necessary, coordination with other programs.
You can choose from two concentrations.
- Community Health: Community Health focuses on key community concerns in the U.S. with a specific focus on health policies, social determinants of health, and health inequities. It looks at the ways in which national policies affect individuals’ and communities’ health and well-being. Faculty at Clark work on a variety of community health concerns, including mental health, diversion programs to steer youths away from gangs and sexual exploitation, research and intervention with hard-to-reach populations, and factors that impede people’s ability to live healthy lives. Students who concentrate in community health will gain a solid understanding of the barriers and facilitators to accessing care, the ways in which local and national communities and governments set health priorities and evaluate needs, and the role of policies in mitigating the effects of inequities and ensuring healthy communities.
- Global Health: Global health calls for improving health and achieving health equity for all people worldwide. It explores the global and local determinants of disease in high-income and low-income countries, and calls for transnational collaboration in research, practice, and action. Faculty at Clark work on a variety of global health issues, including reproductive health, non-communicable diseases, environmental health, HIV/AIDS, malaria, and many more. Students who concentrate on global health will gain a solid understanding of the global burden of disease, the major actors and institutions that influence the global health policy agenda, how health systems are organized around the world, and how they might contribute to achieving health equity as a global health professional.
MHS Curriculum
The 12-unit M.H.S. curriculum offers flexibility in sequencing of courses and areas of focus. Faculty will work with individual students to address their specific interests including, if necessary, coordination with other programs.
Students will spend the first year of their degree learning about theories of community and/or global health, health inequities and disparities, and epidemiology and biostastistics. In the second year, students will apply what they learned in their first year to real-world situations in community-based field experiences. The culminating experience of the curriculum will take place in an integrative project which will provide students with a capstone experience (individual or team-based), where they learn to translate knowledge into action with local and international partners or with a faculty member on their research.
NOTE: 1 unit is made up of either one full course OR two 0.5 courses called “Modules”, which typically run for 7 weeks in the first half or second half of the semester.
II. Electives (7 units: 2 Methods/Skills and 5 in focal areas):
Methods or Skills: Please refer to the Methods and Skills Options below.
Focal Areas (5 Units):
In consultation with their advisor, students will identify which of these focal areas best meets their interests, and can select from these broad sets of courses to complete their curriculum. Currently, these areas are:
- Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation
- Conservation and Development
- Refugees, Forced Migration, and Belonging
- Education and Development
- Youth Development
- Urban Regeneration: Economic and Workforce Development
- Monitoring Evaluation, and Learning
- Gender and Equity
- Health Equity
- Healthy People, Healthy Planet
III. Internship or Field Training (1 unit)
- Supervised team-based OR individual internship
IV. Capstone (1 unit)
The MHS Capstone course provides students with an opportunity to apply their graduate training to an initiative in the broad field of community and global health. Capstone students will work in small teams on various aspects of a faculty-led project. The projects will typically be problem-centered, meaning focused on real-world issues and challenges in which faculty are currently engaged as scholars and practitioners.
Methods and Skills Options
IDCE methods and skills courses are grouped into three clusters. The first cluster consists of general methods courses that are appropriate to students across programs (IDSC, CDP, ES&P, and MHS). These courses are foundational and relevant to all concentrations. The second cluster consists of methods and skills courses that pertain more to specific programs, concentrations and/or certificates. Students should review the syllabi posted on Moodle and then consult with their advisors and/or the instructors to determine the relevance of the course materials to her/his plan of study. The third cluster consists of methods and skills courses that are highly specialized and are unlikely to be appropriate to students from other programs, concentrations, and/or certificates.
Second and third cluster courses may require technical skills as pre-requisites. Additionally, some second and third cluster methods and skills courses may be closed to students not enrolled in a specific program.
Cluster 1 General (offered at least annually)
IDCE 310 Intro to Geographic Information Systems
IDCE 340 Fundamentals of Youth Work
IDCE 358 Advanced Topics: Policy Analysis
IDCE 361 Development Program and Project Management
IDCE 366 Principles of Negotiation and Mediation: An Overview of Conflict Resolution Approaches
IDCE 30103 Networks and Analytics of Development
IDCE 30109 Introduction to Epidemiology and Biostastistics
IDCE 30110 Social Policy: Qualitative methods for design and analysis
IDCE 30225 Grant Writing for Community Developers
IDCE 30229 Program Monitoring and Evaluation
IDCE 30238 Public Communication Seminar
IDCE 30281 Community Needs and Resource Analysis
IDCE 30291 Qualitative Research Methods
IDCE 30296 Nonprofit Management I
Cluster 2 More Specialized (offered annually or biannually)
IDCE 319 Quantitative Methods And Statistics For Evaluators
IDCE 332 Sustainable Development Assessment and Planning
IDCE 333 Development Mgmt in Developing Countries
IDCE 334 Planning and Zoning for Community Developers
IDCE 335 Strategies for Community Organizing
IDCE 30203 Program Evaluation for Youth and Community Development Initiatives
IDCE 30204 Advanced Community Development Finance and Research
IDCE 30218 Community Development Decision Making & Negotiations
IDCE 30274 Computer Programming for GIS
IDCE 30281 Community Needs and Resource Analysis
IDCE 30282 Community Based Health Research
IDCE 30287 Fundamentals of Environmental Science
IDCE 30289 Community Development Finance
IDCE 30306 GIS for International Development in Practice
IDCE 30360 Spatial Analysis for Health
IDCE 30393 Seminar in Social Applications of GIS
Cluster 3 Highly Specialized (offered annually, biannually, or as demand requires)
GEOG 392 Remote Sensing of Global Environmental Change
GEOG 397 Advanced Raster GIS
IDCE 302 Python Programming
IDCE 334 Planning and Zoning for Community Developers
IDCE 342 Dynamic Modeling of Human/Environment Systems
IDCE 388 Advanced Vector GIS
IDCE 30102 Case Studies in Environmental Issues and Policy Analysis
IDCE 30108 Research Methods for Forced Migration: Hidden, Vulnerable, and Mobile People
IDCE 30262 Web Mapping and Open Source GIS
Program Faculty
Tim Downs (IDCE)
Ellen Foley (IDCE)
Marianne Sarkis (IDCE)
Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger (IDCE)
Laurie Ross (IDCE)
Margaret Post (IDCE, Mosakowski Institute)
Affiliated faculty:
Kathy Palm-Reed (PSYC)
Nicole Overstreet (PSYC)
Esther Jones (HS)
Patrick Derr (PHIL)
Daniel Lambert (PSYC)
Esteban Cardemil (PSYC)
Rosalie Torres-Stone (SOC)
Kathleen Jordan (MPA)
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