Department Overview

The Hubert Department of Global Health (HDGH) seeks to improve health services and delivery systems around the world through innovative research, excellence in teaching, and engaged service. With this mission, the global health department offers an ideal opportunity for students passionate about learning public health through a global lens.

Values

As a department, we believe that Global Health encompasses:

  • Health as a human right
  • The World Health Organization’s model that health is more than the absence of disease
  • The belief that “local is global”
  • A focus on understanding interconnected systems and intersectional identities that shape the health of individuals and communities
  • An understanding of the historical, social and political forces that have and continue to shape global health
  • Identifying and dismantling systems of oppression that negatively impact health
  • Addressing inequities in access to health care and in health outcomes
  • Addressing the health needs of vulnerable communities at home and abroad
  • Humility and awareness of one’s own privilege, perspective, and knowledge requiring reflexive inquiry into individual and identity-based power
  • Honoring community wisdom about the causes and solutions to the problems we face
  • An emphasis on working with and for communities, partnering to co-create new knowledge and build evidence necessary to advance public health, health equity, and social justice.

How does the HDGH Prepare Students?

The HDGH curriculum is shaped by our vision of Global Health. The department prepares students for careers in a variety of public health-related fields including program development, evaluation, and management, research, and policy. The HDGH curriculum integrates methods and skillsets with subject-specific knowledge, emphasizes self-reflection, critical thinking, academic integrity, personal growth, and inter-professional collaboration, and inculcates a systems approach to understanding and addressing global health issues. Recognizing that local is global, our curriculum examines health in all contexts, including the United States.  Through rigorous coursework, applied experience opportunities, mentorship, and research, we equip HDGH students to be ethical servant leaders in the ever-evolving field of global health.  Given a constantly changing global context, we recognize that students require the ability to manage ambiguity and uncertainty, adapt to rapidly changing situations, and anticipate the social, environmental, and technological trends of the future, including how these trends will shape health and how they can be leveraged to achieve global health goals.

Ultimately, we aim for our students to:

  • uphold a commitment to scientific evidence, research excellence, and transparency to guide global health recommendations and response;
  • have actionable and marketable public health knowledge and skills that are adaptable to a range of situations and to emerging global health needs;
  • be equipped to apply ethical, equitable, collaborative, and sustainable approaches to global health challenges in a spirit of servant leadership;
  • be critical thinkers whose learning and growth are driven by reflexivity and self-examination, intellectual curiosity, scientific inquiry, passion, and social justice;
  • seek to understand the values and motivations of all stakeholders;
  • apply interdisciplinary perspectives, expertise, and skillsets in pursuit of global health equity and social justice

Core Skills and Competencies

We envision the HDGH competencies to be the foundational skills of MPH students matriculating with a degree in Global Health achieved through coursework, practice, and research experiences. These competencies, organized into seven domains (see figure below), are grounded in six core cross-cutting skills and complement the foundational school-wide MPH competencies.

As a guiding tool, the competencies offer flexibility in that they may be achieved and evaluated in a variety of ways to foster individual creativity and critical thinking, while still upholding the highest standards of academic rigor and scientific integrity.

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In the following section, each domain is described with its associated competencies.

Provides foundational knowledge of the variety of research methods, measures, and metrics used in global health, including quantitative estimation methods, qualitative assessments, strengths, limitations, appropriate applications, and presentation /visualization. In addition to understanding existing measures based on historical trajectories, this domain emphasizes a forward-looking approach to anticipate and plan for future trends.

  1. Use qualitative or quantitative data sources to assess and interpret global health outcomes and risk factors. This may include temporal trends such as past and current patterns as well as projected future trends, and distribution by socioeconomic, demographic and other (risk) factors.
  2. Critique the application of data and metrics commonly used in global health for example, fertility, mortality, morbidity, disability, equity.
  3. Visualize or present data in ways that are accurate, accessible, and appropriate for different stakeholders.
  4. Describe the use of measures and metrics in recommendation development and priority setting for research, policy, or practice.

Encompasses understanding performance of public, private, and nonprofit health systems at national, subnational and community level as well as the building blocks of health systems strengthening, and strategies for universal health coverage.

  1. Critique the design, administration, delivery, and performance of health systems.

Encompasses an understanding of the entire program cycle from strategic analysis, design, management, learning, evaluation, sustainability, and scale-up and the importance of engaging community members as central to the development, management, and evaluation of programs that affect them. Includes the ability to refine all phases of the program cycle with flexibility, to incorporate feedback, continued learning, systems thinking, and strategic analysis to assess factors shaping health trends in a given context, and to formulate and adopt appropriate interventions, projects, and programs at the local, national, and international levels. This domain places an emphasis on implementation science that aims to both effectively translate research into practice and to improve specific stages in the program cycle.

  1. Demonstrate ability to integrate evidence or appropriate theory to ensure program alignment with priorities at the local, regional, national or international level.
  2. Describe how to conduct relevant operational, implementation, or community-based research to inform the design, adaptation, implementation or evaluation of programs or interventions.
  3. Use evidence and theory to design or adapt interventions, projects, or programs that are appropriate for local context.
  4. Develop proposals to secure donor support.
  5. Develop theory-based and contextually appropriate monitoring, evaluation and learning plans.
  6. Apply contextually specific management skills including but not limited to the identification of appropriate project, financial or team management tools.
  7. Identify program and financial management practices and how they differ across public, private and nonprofit sectors.
  8. Identify strategies to (pick one: adapt, sustain or scale) evidence-based (pick one: interventions, programs, or policies) across diverse settings.

This domain emphasizes skills, including the use of technology, related to the development and delivery of tailored communication strategies that disseminate learnings from research, program development, and evaluation to foster partnerships, accountability and transparency, and advocate for evidence-based policies and programs.

  1. Communicate global health research, recommendations or policies effectively and transparently across a range of audiences and contexts, tailoring information, messaging, channels or approaches to their needs and preferences, including but not limited to written, oral and visual formats.
  2. Advocate for policies or programs to improve global health through goal-oriented situational analysis, strategy formulation, coalition-building, community organizing, or sustained action.

This domain focuses on the values and skills required of the global health professional to engage diverse stakeholders. It includes the ability to reflect on one’s own privilege and power, recognize the risks of perpetuating harmful hierarchies and power differentials at individual and systemic levels, and identify effective strategies to reverse these imbalances in one’s own practice.

  1. Demonstrate reflexivity and humility regarding one’s own power, privilege, culture and professional paradigms, acknowledging one’s own limitations, biases, and influence.
  2. Exhibit professional values that demonstrate diplomacy, commitment to social justice, health equity, the dismantling of oppressive systems of power and respect for the unique cultures, values, roles/responsibilities and expertise represented by diverse professions, communities and groups working in global health.
  3. Describe leadership practices or styles that foster local ownership, joint decision-making, mutual learning and benefit, and equitable representation of stakeholders in partnerships, especially across a range of power and privilege differentials.
  4. Identify professional habits that enable self-guided, ongoing learning and leadership development in global health.

This domain applies a health equity and social justice framework to understand and reflect on the influence of geopolitical systems, historical structures, systems of oppression, and social, environmental, and economic forces on health and health systems at local, national, and global levels. Collectively, this focus contributes to the decolonization of global health. An understanding of global health actors and architecture and the evolution of these serves as a foundation for effective engagement across political landscapes to achieve global health goals.

  1. Analyze the impact of sociocultural, political, economic, environmental, religious, or historical factors on health or health behavior at multiple levels of a socio-ecologic framework in low-resource settings.
  2. Describe factors that influence equitable access to resources, including quality health services, between or within countries.
  3. Critique the systems of oppression and discrimination that exist in a given context and their influence on health or health behavior.
  4. Identify strategies to challenge systems oppression and discrimination (i.e. global racism, gender bias, homophobia) to improve health outcomes.
  5. Critique global health and development policies, programs, or research with respect to impacts on health equity, human rights, and social justice.
  6. Contrast the causes and consequences of poverty and inequity across diverse global contexts.

Encompasses the ability of the global health practitioner to apply sound ethical reasoning in all aspects of global health practice and research.

  1. Describe key ethical theories, frameworks, or principles as they relate to global health practice and research.
  2. Apply sound ethical reasoning to the design, implementation and evaluation of global health programs, policies or practice, including community engagement processes.
  3. Anticipate the positive and negative impacts of global health programs, policies, or research on communities and individuals.

Collaboration

Collaboration is a key component to our program. Our diverse faculty and students work closely with local and international organizations including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Gates Foundation, the Global Health Institute, as well as various others, to reduce public health inequities and improve public health around the world. Learn about Rollins' research centers

Land Acknowledgment

Land

Statement: The Hubert Department of Global Health (HDGH) acknowledges that Emory University was built upon the unceded territory of the Mvskoke/Muscogee Creek Nation (one of the eleven indigenous Tribes of Georgia. 

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What is a land acknowledgement?

A land acknowledgement is a statement that formally recognizes the enduring relationship between indigenous peoples and their traditional territories.

Why do we recognize the land?

We recognize the land as an expression of gratitude and appreciation to those whose territory we live, learn and play on, and to honor the indigenous people who have been living and working on the land from time immemorial. We pay respect to the Mvskoke/Muscogee Creek people, past, present, and future, and their ancestral lands. We also recognize the many legacies of violence, including enslavement, displacement, migration, settlement, and colonization, that bring us together today. 

Whose land are we on?

The Mvskoke/Muscogee Creek people: Through the First Treaty of Indian Springs (January 8th, 1821), signed by the U.S. government and the Mvskoke/Muscogee Creek Nation, Mvskoke/Muscogee Creek people were forced to relinquish the land which is now present-day DeKalb County and the home of Emory’s first campus, Oxford College, as well as the main campus on Clifton Road.  It is significant that Emory University was founded in 1836, fifteen years after the First Treaty of Indian Springs, as the sons of the new settlers were beginning to reach college age. The 1821 treaty and others during this period led to massive land dispossession from Indigenous nations and allowed for continued expansion of the Southeastern plantation economy and enslavement of Africans and their descendants.

From 1821 through 1850, most of the Mvskoke/Muscogee Creek people living in what is known as present day Georgia were coerced by the U.S. Government to leave their ancestral lands and relocated to the states of Oklahoma and Alabama (Trail of Tears), where they continue to live today as a federally recognized Tribal Nation. The Lower Muskogee Creek Tribe is the only officially recognized Mvskoke/Muscogee Creek group presently living in the State of Georgia. This tribe has been recognized as a legal entity by the Georgia General Assembly, maintaining their tribal government in the old Tribal Town of Tama, southern Georgia.

Moving Beyond Acknowledgement

The Hubert Department of Global Health joins others in uncovering these historical truths and actively seeks to identify meaningful actions and resources to overcome colonial and post-colonial legacies and to support the struggle of communities seeking social justice. As we live and learn on these territories, it is important to have awareness and knowledge of the legacies of displacement, enslavement, and domination as well as a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of the past and our present behavior. Reflecting on the colonial origins of our existing social structures, institutions, systems, and polices and their connection to social determinants of health, can empower our research, teaching, and outreach to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals.

For more resources to engage in the ongoing and continual process of acting in solidarity with Indigenous people in Georgia follow these links.

Resources:

The HDGH land acknowledgment above is one approach through which the Cultural Humility, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion of the Hubert Department of Global Health at the Rollins School of Public Health shows respect and recognition of Indigenous Peoples/Nations and their historical lands as well as our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in our Department, School, University and community.

This section was created by: HDGH students Deborah Adenikinju and Sofia Huster, HDGH faculty Dabney P. Evans and Claudia Ordóñez and the Cultural Humility, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee.

 

 

Faculty

Among the Rollins School of Public Health’s 169 full-time faculty, 52 hold primary appointments in the Hubert Department of Global Health. Our primary faculty are complemented by 25 jointly appointed faculty (with other departments at RSPH, Emory Medical School, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and other schools in the University) and more than 100 adjunct faculty (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, World Health Organization, CARE, and others). Our faculty have been recognized with numerous national and international teaching, research, and service awards.

Notable National Awards

The following faculty have each been awarded the ASPPH Early Career Public Health Teaching Award:

  • Dr. Amy Webb-Girard (2019), Dr. Dabney Evans (2018), Dr. Kate Winskell (2016), Dr. Juan Leon (2012) and Dr. Rob Stephenson (2007).
  • Dr. Roger Rochat received the Society of Family Planning’s 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award for his impactful work surrounding maternal mortality at an international scale
  • Dr. Carlos del Rio was also the recipient of the 2021 American Public Health Association Award for Excellence in Public Health
  • Dr. Kathryn Yount was recognized in July 2021 as No. 1 on the list of influential researchers in the field of women’s empowerment research in a report published by Women’s Studies International Forum
  • Dr. Liliana Aguayo-Markes was recognized by the American Heart Association with the 2021 Scott Grundy Award for Excellence in Metabolism Research.
  • Dr. Joanne McGriff was selected as Inaugural Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the Rollins School of Public Heath (2021)

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Fellowships

Our department hosts the Humphrey Fellowship program. Humphrey fellows are mid-career professionals from developing countries who are selected for their leadership potential. Additional international fellows are funded by the Foege, Fulbright, CDC, and Muskie Programs.

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Degree Offerings

The master of public health (MPH) degree in global health provides students with applied public health training in a global context. This program is offered in a 4-Semester (20-month) format, as well as a 3-Semester (15-month or 12-month) format.

Customized Learning

To personalize and strengthen their training, students in global health have the flexibility to take elective courses at Rollins, or in some cases, from other graduate programs within Emory University or other Atlanta Universities. Also, many of our students decide to enhance their degree with a certificate in one of eleven specialized areas. Our certificate program provides students with the opportunity to build their expertise in pressing public health issues (including human rights, mental health, complex humanitarian emergencies, maternal and child health, socio-contextual determinants and more) through course work, an applied practice experience, and a culminating experience tailored to their area of focus.

 

Careers

Graduates of the program find employment abroad with international and bilateral agencies, government departments, nongovernmental organizations, and research and academic institutions. Many also work with US-based organizations concerned with global issues. Some graduates go into clinical fields and others go on to pursue a doctoral degree.      

View Graduate Employment Status Report

Associate Director of Academic Programs (ADAPs)

Amanda Prophett is the Department's Assistant Director of Academic Programs (ADAP). She will serve as your academic advisor throughout your program. She will guide you through all of the requirements of your degree, connect you with resources on and off campus, and advocate on your behalf.

ADAP, Amanda Prophett

Email: amanda.prophett@emory.edu

Amanda Prophett