Competency levels among MPH epidemiology students after implementing a novel culminating experience

In a 21st century MPH, the culminating experience (CE) gives students an opportunity to synthesize and integrate core public health skills. George Mason University recently redesigned the MPH epidemiology concentration CE. To determine the success of this redesign, students self-evaluated their skills on five competencies before and after CE (communication, study design, literature review, data analysis, public data sets). CE comprised 5 components focused on a single research question: formulate a research question, conduct a literature review, design an epidemiologic study, analyze publically available data, and summarize findings. The pre- and post-test were completed by 12 and 8 students, respectively.

Responses ranged between 1 (never) – 4 (expert). Mean score difference reflected perceived change in skills.

The greatest improvements were recorded for communication (pre=2.5; post=3.6; change=1.1) and designing an epidemiological study (pre=2.4; post=3.4; change =0.96). Students reported gains in familiarity with publically available data sets (pre=2.6; post=3.4; change=0.8). Proficiency conducting data analysis showed the smallest gain (pre=2.7; post=3.2; change=0.5), along with conducting a literature review (pre=3.0; post=3.6; change=0.6).

Findings suggest that the redesigned CE resulted in gains in perceived student skills. Moreover, these findings highlight the utility of implementing continuous evaluation to quantify student improvement in core public health areas.