Master of Science in Public Health (MSPH) in Social and Behavioral Interventions

Core Competencies

Expected key competencies include

Competencies
1. Identify major global health problems of underserved populations in lower resource contexts, understand important issues in the international community’s response—including the historical tensions of whether to approach them vertically or horizontally, the challenges of programmatic and environmental sustainability, and the complex evolution of major global health initiatives—and examine examples of past and ongoing interventions.
2. Describe conceptual tools from the social and behavioral sciences to: understand multi-level factors influencing health behavior; apply appropriate combinations of theoretically based intervention modalities to scenarios; and apply these tools and modalities to design community-centered social and behavioral interventions.
3. Examine methodologies for qualitative inquiry, formulate appropriate qualitative research questions, collaborate with community partners, and collect qualitative data using multiple methods appropriate to address a real-world public health challenge.
4. Distinguish and apply context-appropriate inductive and deductive qualitative data analysis methodologies to qualitative data sets, manage and interpret qualitative data, and present findings in audience-appropriate formats to collaborating community partners.
5. Develop theory driven, integrated formative research and user-centered design protocols to inform the development of appropriate, feasible, acceptable, and sustainable social and behavioral interventions in lower income contexts.