Re-designing an Undergraduate Curriculum to Reflect Framing the Future: The BYU Experience

Brigham Young University’s undergraduate degree in public health serves 702 students within four discipline specific emphasis areas: health promotion, epidemiology, environmental/occupational health, and health science. To align the curriculum with the Framing the Future (FTF) recommendations, in August 2015 a team of seven faculty members were tasked with exploring and designing a new curriculum scope and sequence.

The first step was to develop program level learning outcomes. A systematic review of the FTF domains and cross cutting areas, the shared discipline competencies, and general public health was completed. Based on the review, the team identified 14 learning outcomes. Next, we formed six core classes that reflect the FTF domains of human health across the life span; determinants of human health; health systems and policy; data collection and analysis; and planning, interventions, and evaluation.

Thirdly, the team developed knowledge and skill expectations for each core course. These learning outcomes were drawn from FTF domains and cross-cutting areas and discipline specific documents. The final step was to develop a list of specialized emphasis specific courses that will reinforce the concepts introduced in the core. We discovered that while we had a strong curriculum we were missing key FTF elements. Faculty are concerned that traditional course titles such as “epidemiology” are absent. We anticipate a synergy within classes from a more coordinated curriculum.