DrPH Program Revisions Starting in Academic Year 2024-25

Implementing transformative leadership for racial and health justice

We are excited to announce we are updating our program to create a DrPH in Leadership program that ensures its graduates can create evidence-based and practical skills to lead impactful, long-lasting change focused on persistent root causes of inequity.  Effectively addressing persistent health disparities caused by centuries of unjust policies and practices requires transformational leadership that fosters inclusive, engaged, community-centered collaborative actions toward racial and health justice.

The revised program is best suited for mid and late-career professionals with at least three years of experience.

What to expect from the revised program Heading link

  • Leading racial & health justice

    Curriculum explicitly focuses on leading systems and transformational change centered on racial and health justice to produce lasting, sustainable impact.

  • New scholarly practice dissertation

    DrPH students can choose between an applied research dissertation or a new scholarly practice dissertation to emphasize building evidence in practice.

  • Catalyze personal growth

    Executive coaching, peer mentorship programs and focused advising will ensure successful learning and progress to graduation alongside a journey for personal growth.

Student experience Heading link

  • 3.5 years of study, a new reduced time to graduation.

  • Application of skills and concepts to practice.

  • Community of student leaders from around the globe learning together.

  • Practice faculty with applied and research expertise, passionate about equity, anti-racism and health justice.

Program principles Heading link

 

The UIC DrPH program practices transformational leadership emphasizing leadership as a process of engaging diverse strengths. Complex challenges rooted in systems of unjust policies and practices require leadership that goes beyond short-term, individual solutions, and relying on persons in authority or who have the most technical expertise. The program emphasizes:

  • practices of self reflection, listening and engaging inclusive voices
  • strategies for community collaboration
  • coalition building and organizing
  • development of a vision toward a shared understanding of challenges
  • co-creation toward a generative future designed to shift power and resources that enable liberation for all

The UIC DrPH program emphasizes addressing equity through anti-racism in public health, encompassing a breadth of ideas, language and theories and deliberate, conscious actions by individuals and organizations to:

  • build relationships and trust to create containers for dialogue
  • expose structures, policies, and practices that create and sustain racial disparities in health
  • confront the underlying root causes of inequities through collaborative, evidence-based action

The DrPH program’s goal for public health centers on dismantling structural racism and transforming systems to realize equity for all.

The UIC DrPH program promotes an approach to investigation into organizational or community challenges that draws on the tenets of science but maintains a pragmatic focus on experience-based problem solving to gather real-world data, and employs systematic methods and critical thinking related to those who are directly experiencing the problem.

At the core of the UIC DrPH program is its students, alumni, faculty, and staff. The program’s students share their experiences and expertise with one another through the course of their time in the program and are critical components to one another’s leadership journeys. Through its focus on building communities of practice among its students, and through formal mentoring and coaching opportunities, the DrPH program fosters peer networking for students’ personal and professional growth.

  • Revised leadership principles that embrace more inclusive, diverse and liberatory concepts toward transformational change;
  • New and revised courses that include foundations of anti-racism and equity, systems thinking,  strategy development and implementation for organizations and communities, community organizing, coalition building and collaborative approaches for systems and policy change, and implementation science;
  • New program-wide executive coaching and expanded peer mentoring and advising to foster individual and interpersonal leadership development;
  • Theory-of-change principles and a process that guides the curriculum trajectory so that students practice transformational change for racial, economic, social, and health justice practice, scholarship, and research in real time;
  • Strengthened and practical emphasis on mixed-methods and building evidence in and with community and practitioners;
  • An Applied Practice Experience where all students are responsible for completion of at least one project with an organization to advance public health practice with an emphasis on building evidence and scholarship;
  • A new practice-based scholarship track, expanding evidence-building approaches by offering dissertation choices that include practice-based scholarship or more traditional research;
  • Revised courses focused on practical skills (e.g., 8-week classes with immediate application of skills); and
  • Ability to graduate in 3.5 years.