MPH 590 Public Health and Health Education Capstone
This graduate-level course will focus on the written explanation of the project the student completed during MPH590. The opportunity to demonstrate knowledge of essential theory, incorporate research findings, and demonstrate scholarly thought will be the emphasis of this course. This project-based capstone is designed to encourage the student to draw upon knowledge and experience gained over the course of the entire MPH program and during the public health internship. The capstone course is intended for the student to explain and defend a substantial original applied project of your own authorship.
Course Learning Objectives (CLOs):
After this course, you will be able to:
- Synthesize knowledge acquired from other public health coursework and formulate an original, comprehensive project proposal on a topic of public health interest.
- Conduct a comprehensive analysis of the literature to support the research proposal.
- Design an implementation plan that integrates knowledge of theories, principles, methodologies, and processes to evaluate the research proposal.
- Disseminate significant components of the project through a written paper and oral presentation, relating in detail the design, implementation, results, and conclusions of the capstone project.
- Apply the scientific rigor of the American Psychological Association's publication guidelines to research report preparation.
- Defend a public health capstone project.
Prerequisites
MPH501 Public Health in America
MPH503 Health Policy & Ethical Issues in Public Health
MPH505 Public Health Education & Program Oversight
MPH510 Epidemiology in Public Health
MPH520 Disaster Management & Emergency Preparedness
MPH530 Environmental Issues in Public Health
MPH540 Public Health Administration
MPH550 Health Behavior and Health Education
MPH560 Applied Biostatistics for Public Health
MPH570 Evidence-Based Practice in Public Health
MPH580: Public Health and Health Education Internship
Capstone
All MPH students will complete MPH 590: Capstone Experience in their final semester of the program. MPH 590: Capstone Experience serves as students’ culminating experience where students will utilize the information acquired from previous public health courses and internship to design, carry out, and present a scholarly project through a paper and poster presentation.
Options for Your Capstone Project
Research project: Students conducting a research project will identify a problem to be studied, review the literature associated with the problem, collect data about the problem (quantitative &/or qualitative), analyze the data in order to either support or refute a pre-selected hypothesis or answer research questions, discuss the findings, present conclusions, and make recommendations based on the study. The resultant paper should be suitable for publication.
Grant proposal: Students writing a grant proposal for a public health initiative will identify the problem for which the grant would be used, explain the significance, list the hypotheses/questions to be answered, review the literature associated with the problem, create goals and objectives, methods, create a timeline and budget, and explain how the intervention would be evaluated. The resultant paper should be suitable for submission.
Other project: This category is an all-inclusive section for projects such as community outreach reports, evaluation of an intervention or interventions, policy analysis, evaluation of an existing program, written plan for a program or a manual. This list is not exhaustive, and the program will consider any projects that result in scholarly work.
Goals and Objectives
Upon completion of this course successful students will:
- Compose a scholarly project
- Identify appropriate literature through the use of varied library resources, public-domain repositories and Internet search engines to support their scholarly project.
- Develop and organize complex ideas in a logical, orderly and well-written fashion.
- Critique limitations while creating scholarly work.
- Develop enhanced written and oral communication skills.
- Interpret reviewer feedback and defend scholarly work.