Our educational activities focus in two areas.

The first is workforce development, where we co-develop and conduct training and co-learning activities with public health entities. As an example, our division supports the Public Health Bootcamp, an intensive five-day training program that aims to improve the quality and effectiveness of HIV prevention and care services in metropolitan Chicago by training HIV/AIDS organizational leaders in core concepts of public health science, theory and practice.

The second is educational infusion, where we partner with the Program in Public Health to bring public health education into other Feinberg education programs. One example is the new DPT/MPH Program, which integrates human movement sciences and public health to train population-health-oriented physical therapists.

Our research activities focus on public health practice relevance. Through equitable partnerships, we collaborate with public health entities on investigations that prioritize their research questions. For example, at their request, we recently evaluated the Chicago Department of Public Health and the Public Health Institute of Metropolitan Chicago’s Healthy Chicago 2.0 Seed Grant Request for Proposals (RFP) process. Our evaluation findings were used to strengthen this year’s RFP process. We anticipate further growth in our research activities, with a likely emphasis on public health practice-related dissemination and implementation.