Public Health and Planetary Health (Graduate Field)

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Field Description

The field of Public Health & Planetary Health unites and facilitates the university’s basic and applied research at the intersection of human population health and ecosystem health. The field currently offers Master of Public Health (MPH), accelerated MPH, and a complementary MPA/MPH program.

Master of Public Health

Cornell’s MPH curriculum is designed to help students build and develop skills in areas that are critical for public health. Different from large undergraduate programs, this professional master’s program is designed to create a ‘community of practice’ where we all push each other to grow and improve, in both traditional public health knowledge areas, and in professional competence (e.g., “soft skills”, “leadership”, “emotional intelligence”, etc.). We are a small cohort of students and core faculty, drawing on expertise from across campus and across the world. At this time, we offer two concentration areas, with interdisciplinary instruction from both researchers and practitioners:

Emergency Preparedness & Management

Students in this concentration will learn the drivers of emergencies and environmental disasters, and the organizational theories, policies, and practices that influence prevention, preparedness, and response. Students will assess and analyze disaster-related risks to community health, spatially map physical and socioeconomic vulnerabilities, anticipate how those risks and vulnerabilities will change over time, and use this understanding to inform response.

Environment, Climate & Health

Students in the Environment, Climate & Health concentration will become leaders of change. Critically, they will not only learn the downstream, harmful impacts of current behaviors, but will learn how to design, implement, and test interventions at both the local and global levels that promote inter-related human health and environmental health. Students will expand their toolkits by considering externalities and risks, elevating indigenous voices and lived experiences, working collaboratively, and making data-based decisions that recognize tradeoffs and future consequences.

Food Systems for Health

Students learn to take a systems approach to assess and coordinate policies or interventions that ensure safe and sustainable land use, food production, food storage, food processing, food delivery, and consumption. This includes training in toxicology, food safety, food and water security, and/or nutrition. Students learn how to engage local and global communities to assess systems or needs, develop interventions from a One Health approach, and lead monitoring and evaluation processes to ensure public health needs are being met.

Infectious Disease Epidemiology

Graduates are prepared to manage, prevent, identify, and respond to infectious disease threats, covering ongoing and emerging viral, bacterial, fungal or parasitic disease concerns in both humans and animals. Students learn how to measure and track disease spread, map and disseminate appropriate public health communications, and to lead a coordinated response to address the public health need. This includes training in epidemiological techniques specifically related to infectious diseases and outbreak investigation, as well as training in vector borne diseases.

Data and Statistics

Field Manual