Integrative Capstone - The Opportunity to Ideate and Innovate Improved Health and Well-being

Summary: This session will introduce participants to an approach for developing a culminating experience that incorporates a community or organizational need addressed through a platform nurturing innovative problem-solving by MPH students. This integrative capstone is a culminating experience designed to provide students with the opportunity to demonstrate mastery of knowledge and skills they have acquired through their MPH education. The session will review the applied methodology that combines action research and service learning for students. Following a four-step approach used in strategic design: Discover, Define, Design and Deliver, we start with systems thinking to hone the project question or area of focus through a literature review and discussion, application of subject-specific methodology and analysis. Students have multiple opportunities to brainstorm, present their initial ideas, gain feedback from the group, refine their question/problem statement and develop innovative solutions. This process of inquiry improves public health professionals’ ability to design public health strategies, including best practices and program evaluation to measure success. Our course includes case method, mind mapping, service mapping, role playing, logic models, root-cause analysis, and program development, and evaluation as the students create a project from ideation to development of recommendations and an implementation plan that is ultimately delivered to the project stakeholder. Furthermore, a key aspect of public health is the ability to work in multi-disciplinary teams designed around need vs. disease or profession. Through a team charter, students begin to learn to leverage strengths of team members and provide opportunities to strengthen their identified areas of weakness.