Population & Family Health

The Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health’s academic program develops leaders dedicated to solving critical public health issues, both locally and globally, in the fields of sexual, reproductive, adolescent, child, and refugee health. In doing so, the Department makes every effort to integrate human rights perspectives into all of its activities, ensuring that its public health efforts promote the great social goals of human well-being, equality, and freedom.

Understanding that complex interrelated forces combine to affect people's health, students conduct, synthesize, and apply service-based research to improve both public health practice and policy. The Department also provides students with grounded perspectives driven by community needs and assets. Together, the knowledge and skills obtained enable graduates to create solutions to critical public health concerns.

Students specialize in one track, and pursue curricula designed to convey essential knowledge and key public health competencies.

Tracks of Study

• Forced Migration The program on Forced Migration and Health is committed to professionalizing the field of humanitarian response by training the next generation of public health and humanitarian response workers, leading innovative research, training, and advocacy initiatives, and by offering technical assistance to international organizations.
• Global Health Global Health Track students gain interdisciplinary knowledge of the major concepts, principles, and priorities in the field of global health, as well as the skills to create, implement and evaluate programs of public health research and practice in developing countries.
• Reproductive and Family Health The Reproductive and Family Health Track works to improve the health and well-being of men and women, adolescents and children, in our own neighborhood, throughout the nation, and around the world by developing research and programmatic skills through course work that includes theoretical and sociocultural content.
• Sexuality and Health The Sexuality and Health Track recognizes that sexuality plays a major role in most people's lives, and encompasses a range of behaviors and meanings that are shaped by individual, social, and cultural factors, and that promoting sexual well-being and preventing sexual health problems are vital public health tasks.

The Department’s competencies emphasize research and programmatic skills for students in every track. By providing comprehensive training that highlights the importance of balancing research with direct experience, the Department empowers students to build their careers upon solid foundations of public health practice and knowledge. Having acquired the skills they need to develop, implement, and evaluate public health interventions in their specialty area, graduates of the Department continue on as effective – and reflective – public health professionals, confident of their abilities to serve as researchers, practitioners, and policy advocates.