Re-Imagining the DrPH Degree: Curricular Change and Pedagogical Innovation

Marking the centennial of the Flexner Report, Frenk and Chen (2010) state that the "redesign of professional health education is necessary and timely . . . What is clearly needed is a thorough and authoritative re-examination of health professional education, matching the ambitious work of a century ago."  Following this historic anniversary for medical education, the second decade of the 21st century is marked by the 100-year anniversaries of landmark events in public health education that include the Welch-Rose Report (1915) and the formation of a number of schools and program of public health including the Harvard School of Public Health (1913). In the Fall of 2010, as our School was approaching its centennial in 2013, we realized that we faced a unique opportunity to reimagine education at our School. Just as Harvard pioneered the first DrPH degree at the beginning of the 20th century, we felt particularly invested in being part of the 21st century educational transformation of the DrPH degree informed by our own School’s mission and expertise and the collaborative work taking place through the ASPPH Framing the Future Taskforce.  The result is the Harvard DrPH degree launched in July 2014.  The goal of our new degree is to prepare graduates for an accelerated career path toward senior leadership roles of high impact in the public health and healthcare arenas. This will be achieved through advanced training in the concepts, theories, and methods that are the foundation of public health; integration of multiple disciplines of the relevant public health sciences; the application of the social and managerial sciences to enabling change; and the scholarship of translation to address complex problems of public health policy and practice.  The presentation assesses the educational change journey, the strategies taken, the questions answered, and the questions we continue to grapple with.