Health Education and Community Health Education Essay.

Welcome to the Program in Health Education and Community Health Education at Teachers College

The Programs in Health Education and Community Health Education focus on the provision of public and community health education, while pioneering the twenty-first century evidence-based approaches to urban youth, their families, and communities—including shaping those systems and policies that determine the delivery of services to address health disparities, prevent disease, and promote health; yet, we also prepare leaders who apply this expertise globally. As experts in the delivery of educational preparation and training rooted in the social and behavioral sciences, the faculty of the Programs in Health Education and Community Health Education have trained generations of local, national, and global leaders in governmental, public and community health organizations; research institutions and centers; academia; school systems; hospital and health careservice delivery systems; and, policy institutes.Health Education and Community Health Education Essay.

The Programs in Health Education and Community Health Education specialize in preparing the leaders needed to address contemporary health care challenges, health disparities, and epidemics (e.g., obesity, diabetes, bullying/violence, HIV/AIDS, and other sexually transmitted diseases, etc.), as well as the links between health and academic achievement. The majority of our advanced graduate seminars feature intimate learning environments characterized by small class sizes, while a program highlight is the ease of access to our engaging faculty, as well as a high level of support in ensuring successful degree completion. Our program features faculty with an impressive record of securing grant funding, publishing the leading scholarship in our fields, and providing national and global leadership.Health Education and Community Health Education Essay.

Mission and Vision

The mission of the Programs in Health Education and Community Health Education is to address the health of the public through the preparation of specialists in health education (i.e., M.A., Ed.D.) and community health education (i.e., M.S.) who focus on the community as the setting for analysis, assessment, program planning, intervention, evaluation, and research. This mission includes promoting health, preventing disease, and advancing health equity, while training exceptional leaders for the delivery of outstanding contributions to diverse regional, national, and international communities through teaching, research, and service. Varied structures, institutions, organizations, and agencies in the community setting—including schools, hospitals, clinics, worksites, and non-profits—are engaged in collaborative relationships for purposes of fulfilling the mission.Health Education and Community Health Education Essay.

The vision of the Programs in Health Education and Community Health Education is to create a world-class learning environment that attracts, retains, and graduates leaders who share with faculty a deep commitment to health promotion, disease prevention, and health equity for diverse regional, national and international communities; and, work collaboratively with both faculty and community members through educational, service, and research endeavors, in order to advance and disseminate the behavioral and social science serving as the foundation for effective community health education.Health Education and Community Health Education Essay.

Guiding Values

The Programs in Health Education and Community Health Education value the following:

• Excellence. In order to magnify excellence as a program, we value the importance of attracting and retaining graduate students who have demonstrated the capacity and/or potential for leadership, achieving at the highest levels academically, and successfully working collaboratively with program peers, faculty, other professionals, and community representatives.Health Education and Community Health Education Essay.
• Well-Rounded Preparation. In order to ensure that our graduate students have received well-rounded preparation for professional careers as health education specialists in varied community settings, we value the process of mentoring graduate students toward realization of their highest academic and professional potential through actively engaging students in instructional, colloquia, internship, practicum, service, and research endeavors.
• Establishing the Evidence Base. We see great merit in training the next generation of professionals so they are capable of advancing and disseminating the behavioral and social science that establishes health education as evidence-based, doing so by ensuring involvement in relevant programs of research. At the same time, faculty embrace broad definitions of what constitutes evidence and supports adapting evidence-based approaches so they are linguistically and culturally appropriate, being tailored for specific populations and individual clients.Health Education and Community Health Education Essay.
• Diversity, Health Equity, and Multicultural Competence. We value training that prepares professionals to function in diverse regional, national, and international communities, while advancing health equity, necessitating grounding in multicultural competency principles and practices that guide professional conduct as a health education specialist (i.e., working collaboratively with communities so they actively determine their own health, advancing the right to equity in health, ensuring empowerment, advocating for equal access to opportunities that support health, delivering education and interventions so they reflect cultural appropriateness, and co-producing knowledge with community members’ input to ensure research designs are culturally appropriate and produce findings of cultural relevance).Health Education and Community Health Education Essay.

Our 10 Goals for Achieving Our Program Mission

In order to achieve our mission, the Program has identified 10 goals that fall within the broader categories of educational goals, research goals, service goals, and diversity goals.

Educational Goals

One of the three fundamental purposes of the Program is to deliver education that provides a firm foundation rooted in knowledge of the behavioral and social science principles that guide effective community-based education—including methods of analysis, assessment, program planning, evaluation, and research. We provide classroom instruction, advanced seminar, colloquia and statistical laboratory instruction that ensure training in core competencies essential for addressing public health through community health education that effectively promotes health, prevents disease, and advances health equity.Health Education and Community Health Education Essay.

The Program’s educational goals are:

1. Prepare competent community health practitioners equipped with foundational knowledge and practical skills in core public and community health areas.
2. Provide students with an intellectually stimulating learning environment.
3. Provide students with adequate support to complete their studies in a timely fashion.

Research Goals

The second fundamental purpose of the Program is to advance and disseminate the evidence-base for the behavioral and social science serving as the foundation for the community health education that effectively addresses the health of the public in diverse regional, national, and international communities. We foster exposure to rich and varied programs of research that emphasize establishing the evidence base for community health education practices, using multiple types of evidence and varied research designs (e.g. efficacy, effectiveness, epidemiological, public health, ethnographic, naturalistic, case-studies, process-outcome studies, meta-analyses).Health Education and Community Health Education Essay.

The Program’s research goals are:

1. Advance and disseminate evidence-based research that addresses public health in diverse regional, national, and international communities.
2. Engage students in the advancement and dissemination of evidence-based research that addresses public health in diverse regional, national, and international communities.Health Education and Community Health Education Essay.

Service Goals

In addition, the Program provides opportunities for engagement in internship, practice, and service activities that reflect collaboration with varied institutions, organizations, and agencies in the community setting—including schools, hospitals, clinics, work-sites, and non-profits—thereby providing a firm grounding in the practical application of knowledge in the real-world, as well as reinforcing and extending the knowledge base gained through education.  We promote the sharing of expertise, learning, and working collaboratively with program peers, faculty, other professionals, community stakeholders, and community members—whether via service on advisory boards, institutional committees, advocacy groups, trans-disciplinary groups, or other organizational groups.

The Program’s service goals are:

1. Engage in collaborative work with varied institutions, organizations and agencies to promote public health.
2. Provide continuing education and workforce development opportunities to a national and global audience of public and community health practitioners. Health Education and Community Health Education Essay.

Diversity Goal Statement

Finally, our Program seeks to recruit and retain a diverse student body, faculty and staff as the multicultural setting for accomplishing educational goals—ensuring the representation of racial/ethnic minorities and other under-represented groups such as immigrants and people with disabilities. Students have the option of engaging in a confidential disclosure of their disability status to our Office of Access and Services for Students with Disabilities. We provide an education that prepares students for engagement with diverse populations in regional, national, and international communities. The education we provide also prepares students to engage in health equity research aimed at reducing and eliminating health disparities and addressing the most vulnerable populations.Health Education and Community Health Education Essay.

The Program’s diversity goals are:

1. Recruit and retain a diverse student body, faculty and staff as a multicultural setting for accomplishing educational goals.
2. Prepare students for engagement with diverse populations in regional, national, and international communities.
3. Engage in health equity research aimed at reducing and eliminating health disparities and addressing the most vulnerable populations.

Convenience: Online Courses, Hybrid Courses, Frequently Offered Courses

Numerous courses are offered online or are “hybrid” courses. A hybrid course is offered both online and in-person, permitting distance learning and accommodating the schedules of busy professionals, as well as severe weather, and absences related to illness, etc…; in other words, students have the option of attending in-person or watching a lecture-capture video of the class session and posting assignments online. This makes the degree program a particularly attractive option, especially for students who ordinarily would have to commute long distances to class or who wish to matriculate in the degree program while living at a distance for the some of the period they are pursuing the degree. Meanwhile, hybrid courses accommodate the needs of students who might select an in-person class section yet can watch the video of the online section when special circumstances arise (e.g., severe weather, work-related travel, etc…). Finally, courses are offered with sufficient frequency (e.g., fall, spring and summer session, or 2-3 times per year) to support timely degree completion. Health Education and Community Health Education Essay.