Doctor of Public Health

• DRPH 200: Qualitative Methods in Health Research: Practice, Principles, and Critical Considerations
• DRPH 201: Fundamental Concepts of Public Health
• DRPH 215: Developing and Delivering Purposeful Learning Experiences
• DRPH 240: Personal Mastery
• DRPH 242A/B: Personal Mastery II
• DRPH 250: Enabling Teams
• DRPH 251: Enabling Large Scale Change
• DRPH 255: Team Based Case Development Immersion: Dynamics of Teams in Systems
• DRPH 260: Effective Writing
• DRPH 261: Art of Communication
• DRPH 270: Strategic Management
• DRPH 290A/B: Doctoral Seminar
• DRPH 305: Summer Field Immersion
• ID 201: Principles of BIO and EPI
• ID 100: Foundations for Public Health
• HPM 219: Financial Transactions and Analysis
• HPM 220: Financial Management
• HPM 247: Political Analysis for US Health Policy or GHP 269: The Political Economy of Global Health
• HPM 252: Negotiations
• HPM 260: Health Economics with Applications to Global Health Policy
• HPM 539: Organizational Science for a New Era
• HPM 557: Innovation
• SBS 225: Engaging with the Press or SBS 285: Practical Communications Strategies
• 10 credits of Research Methods

DrPH students can take elective courses offered across all Harvard schools, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Tufts University. Sample of elective courses students have taken from other schools are:

• HBSDOC 4561 : Empirical Studies of Innovation and Digitization
• MIT 15.871 : Introduction to System Dynamics 
• MIT 15.873 : Systems Dynamics: Tools for Solving Complex Problems
• MLD 615M : Mixed Methods Analytics   

Harvard’s DrPH Field Immersions and Doctoral Project are integral to the program, ensuring that students gain practical experience by applying rigorous approaches to public health challenges while collaborating with senior public health practitioners and leaders.

• Case-based Field Immersion: engages student teams during their first academic year working with host organizations and a faculty mentor to develop robust teaching cases and strategic summaries reflecting on complex organizational decision points. 
• Summer Field Immersion: for eight to ten weeks, students engage with a host organization to address a critical public health issue.  Immersions correspond to key competencies of the DrPH program with a focus on leadership, management and governance, while developing meaningful deliverables.
• Doctoral Project: students translate knowledge and demonstrate leadership skills by engaging in projects that improve population health outcomes or create significant evidence with the potential to substantively ameliorate public health. Doctoral candidates typically spend eight months working with a host organization in a field-based experience or independently, while under the guidance of a Doctoral Project Committee culminating their project with a robust thesis and a reflection paper on leadership and enabling change.

Executive coaching is an essential element of the DrPH students’ leadership development. Coaches work with students to identify the their growth edge and leadership development goals. Coaches provide support and challenge throughout the year within executive coaching sessions. The executive coaching sessions build on the student’s academic and field placement work.

1. Explain qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods and policy analysis research and evaluation methods to address health issues at multiple (individual, group, organization, community and population) levels.
2. Design a qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods, policy analysis or evaluation project to address a public health issue.
3. Explain the use and limitations of surveillance systems and national surveys in assessing, monitoring and evaluating policies and programs and to address a population’s health.

1. Propose strategies for health improvement and elimination of health inequities by organizing stakeholders, including researchers, practitioners, community leaders and other partners.
2. Communicate public health science to diverse stakeholders, including individuals at all levels of health literacy, for purposes of influencing behavior and policies.
3. Integrate knowledge, approaches, methods, values and potential contributions from multiple professions, sectors, and systems in addressing public health problems.
4. Create a strategic plan.
5. Facilitate shared decision making through negotiation and consensus-building methods.
6. Create organizational change strategies.
7. Propose strategies to promote inclusion and equity within public health programs, policies and systems.
8. Assess one’s own strengths and weaknesses in leadership capacities, including cultural proficiency.
9. Propose human, fiscal and other resources to achieve a strategic goal.
10. Cultivate new resources and revenue streams to achieve a strategic goal.

1. Design a system-level intervention to address a public health issue.
2. Integrate knowledge of cultural values and practices in the design of public health policies and programs.
3. Integrate scientific information, legal and regulatory approaches, ethical frameworks and varied stakeholder interests in policy development and analysis.
4. Propose interprofessional and/or intersectoral team approaches to improving public health.

1. Assess an audience’s knowledge and learning needs.
2. Deliver training or educational experiences that promote learning in academic, organizational or community settings.
3. Use best practice modalities in pedagogical practices