Environmental Health

The Department of Environmental Health’s (EH) ultimate goal is to protect and promote human health by providing a healthy environment. The MPH in Environmental Health focuses on general environmental sciences, toxicology, epidemiology, recognition, evaluation, and control of hazardous exposures, occupational health practice, and environmental and occupational health policy, while the MPH in Global Environmental Health program focuses on population, demographics, agricultural, industrial and economic development, globalization and global commerce, and international, environmental, and health policy issues.

Students are increasingly aware of the challenges that environmental factors play in health care: questions of sustainability permeate health policy conversations about how to devote resources, the impact of climate change on the world’s population (both human and animal) cannot be underestimated, and the ways in which workplace and residential environmental toxins may affect the health of individuals and populations are important issues. Each of these examples inherently raise ethical concerns, and interventions or solutions proposed to address these challenges are also fraught with ethical issues. For example, to the extent that sustainable resources may be more financially costly in the short term, how much ought an institution be willing to pay in order to promote environmental stewardship? Or how ought a community implement lead abatement projects when the only affordable housing for some residents would be eliminated by this work?

Students interested in the policy and practical implications of strategies to promote a healthy environment would be well served by combining study in environmental health with rigorous work in bioethics. When combined with epidemiological and toxicological analytical skills, students attuned to the ethical issues will not only be better prepared to identify potential risks and hazards, but will also craft solutions that are ethically, as well as scientifically, grounded.

Visit the Department of Environmental Health website

Proposed Curriculum

As EH has several educational partnerships already, their curriculum for students who pursue dual degrees is established. Students will complete their first year of coursework at Rollins and their second year at the Center for Ethics.  

Students will be challenged to consider continually how the information and methodology from one discipline intersects with the other. Through conversations in class and careful selection of class projects, dual degree students will enhance their capacities for interdisciplinary work by ensuring a rigorous evaluation of the intersection of these two disciplines. In fact, it is possible that students will return to the site of their MPH practicum to complete their MA-Bioethics practicum, the second time approaching the relevant issues or program from the perspective of bioethics instead of public health policy or practice. Regardless, the connections for students will be deep and lasting for students in the EH program.

All students in the dual MA-Bioethics/MPH Program are automatically put on the examination track for the MA-Bioethics culminating experience unless prearrangements are made otherwise.

The Environmental Health MPH dual-degree course sequence follows in Table 2.

The Global Environmental Health MPH dual-degree course sequence follows in Table 3.

As Tables 2 and 3 demonstrate, students are expected to be able to complete this dual degree program in 2 calendar years. Regardless, students will have a maximum of 5 years to complete both programs, consistent with the Laney Graduate School Graduate Handbook.