Educational Opportunity Leads to Leadership Roles and Advancing Careers

UH Research & Education Update | November 2023

Seven University Hospitals’ employees started the Master of Public Health (MPH) program at Northeast Ohio Medical University this fall semester under the new UH-NEOMED affiliation agreement arrangements. The MPH program at NEOMED is a consortium program where students learn biostatistics, epidemiology, policy, health services administration, and other public health core concepts in an online format. MPH graduates often take on more leadership roles or apply population-based concepts to further their careers in enhancing their community’s health or research skills.

Samdragupta Bora, PhD, informed UH physicians and staff about the opportunity to pursue the MPH degree. Meredith Broberg, MD, said she started the MPH program “to understand better how public health is organized and functions. It became quite obvious over the past 13 years of practice that health is a product of our community and environment, so to be most impactful in promoting health, it has to be done at a greater scale than patient by patient.” Rita Ryan, MD, states that, “My primary interest was obtaining higher level biostatistics training and more grant writing training. As a neonatal-perinatal medicine physician, our field involved maternal and child health, which leans heavily on and into the public health realm.”

Being able to take classes with fellow UH employees and the program format convinced these current students to start the MPH program at NEOMED.  Academic Affairs Coordinator Abby Zona said “Knowing that fellow UH caregivers and employees were also partaking in this program and were going to be my classmates made me take the jump into the MPH program. The experience of connecting with my classmates will help me in expand my network within the UH community and foster a more collaborative work environment. Whether our careers are in direct or indirect population-based roles, it has enhanced our ability to contribute to advancing public health. Dr. Ryan adds, “This opportunity was presented to me by a UH leader and would be supported by UH as well as have other UH folks involved as students, which were both attractive to me.  I finally had enough bandwidth to think about doing an MPH, which I had considered over a long period.  After meeting Dr. Lee (Program Director), who was so engaging and passionate about the field of public health, I felt this would be a very positive experience.”   

For more information about the Consortium of Eastern Ohio Master of Public Health program, contact Amy Lee, MD, MPH, MBA, CPH, Program Director, at afl@neomed.edu. Watch and learn more about the program at here.