Public health providers and agencies working in southeastern Wisconsin can expect a fresh infusion of talent within the next few years from the Zilber School of Public Health\u2019s first bachelor\u2019s degree program.<\/p>\n
The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents unanimously approved the new Bachelor of Science in Public Health degree on Friday, June 8. The program will begin admitting students in Fall 2018; classes begin in Spring 2019. According to university projections, more than 200 students will enroll in the program in its first five years.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s vote brings the number of degrees offered at Wisconsin\u2019s only certified school of public health to five. The new program is the first undergraduate degree offered by the Zilber School, which opened in downtown Milwaukee in 2009. The Council on Education for Public Health certified the school in 2017, making it one of only 61 dedicated schools of public health in the nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cExpanding public-health courses, research opportunities and internship connections to more students will allow the Zilber School to be even more effective in pursuing our mission of advancing\u00a0population health, health equity and social and environmental justice,\u201d said Ron Perez, interim dean of the Zilber School.<\/p>\n
The new bachelor\u2019s program will help meet the region\u2019s and nation\u2019s increasing demand for a diverse pool of public health professionals as Wisconsin\u2019s public health workforce nears retirement age; a 2011 report projected that nearly 40 percent would retire by 2020. Nationally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected faster than average growth from 2016-2026 in numerous job categories relevant to public health graduates, including health educators and community health workers, environmental scientists and specialists, social and community service managers and statisticians.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith this degree, we\u2019re not only improving outcomes for the region, we\u2019re also giving our students more of what they have come to expect from UW-Milwaukee \u2013 direct access to a rewarding, life-changing profession that will experience rapid growth,\u201d Perez said.<\/p>\n
Public health work can have a significant impact on the community, particularly in highly urban or highly rural communities. Milwaukee, for example, ranks 71 out of 72 Wisconsin counties for health outcomes (e.g. quality of life), health factors (e.g. behaviors) and social and economic factors (e.g. childhood poverty).<\/p>\n
Fourteen new courses have been created to support the new degree, the result of a three-year planning effort by Zilber School faculty, led by associate professor Lorraine Halinka Malcoe. The two-semester course sequence, Public Health from Cells to Society, will use Milwaukee\u2019s lead poisoning crisis to teach the fundamentals of public health intervention and illustrate the many ways the profession works to improve health outcomes at the community level.<\/p>\n
\u201cStudents get to see everything about lead poisoning from where lead is found in the environment and how it gets into the body to what it does to the human body at a cellular level,\u201d Malcoe said.<\/p>\n
The second semester of the course examines policies, from building codes to legislation governing Wisconsin\u2019s rental industry, that determine who gets exposed to lead and who doesn’t.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s an important opportunity to lay out the full range of career possibilities within the public health professions,\u201d Malcoe added. \u201cGraduates will be equipped for entry-level public health careers ina wide variety of settings and sectors. Public health is about asking \u2018What we can do as a community or society to impact health as a whole and reduce health disparities between different social groups?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
This population-based approach is a defining difference between public health professionals and medical professionals.<\/p>\n