The PhD with concentration in Public Health Practice (PhD PHP) emphasizes environmental health practice, policy or management with a focus on applied science and more practical problem solving. The PhD PHP provides a broad education for individuals who may desire positions in environmental health management, policy and the law, academia, industry, consulting, non-governmental or government organizations, education & advocacy, regulatory & legislative design, and regulatory compliance & enforcement. Some major emphases are on the environmental origin of human disease and disease susceptibility, pollution prevention, and integration of environmental health considerations into economic and social decision-making. This professional degree emphasizes a practice-oriented, interdisciplinary approach to research that encompasses in its coursework the competencies of the five core areas of public health: environmental health, biostatistics, epidemiology, health policy and management, and behavioral and community health.
Students in the PhD PHP program are required to complete the core didactic curriculum and then conduct original research leading to the dissertation and defense. The performance site may be within the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health, or in some cases, another external facility. Students can specialize in Environmental Health Risk Assessment, Occupational Health, or Translational Bioscience.
Recent Dissertation Titles
Browse titles in D-Scholarship, the institutional repository for research output at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dissertations above are from the former EOH DrPH program. The new PhD PHP replaced the DrPH and has yet to have any graduates.
Competencies
Graduates will be able to...
- Propose approaches to mitigating and monitoring exposures of individuals to toxic organisms and chemical substances in enclosed spaces
- Propose approaches to the design and use of modern personal devices to monitor individual exposures to chemical and physical hazards, including noise, electromagnetic and ionizing radiation
- Explain to experts and non-specialists the relevance of "green" lifestyles and sustainability to environmental health
- Propose approaches to moving toward "green" lifestyles and sustainability while remaining necessarily dependent on mining and industrial processes
- Conduct a research project, that may include developing testable hypotheses, overseeing the environmental risk assessment of a site, selecting the measurements to be employed, designing data acquisition/experimental procedures, conducting the research and presenting the findings to both generalized and specialized audiences
Requirements
- 72 credits, a minimum of 47 credits in course work.
- Advanced EOH specialty coursework in toxicology, exposure, environmental transport, and risk assessment; plus additional coursework in biostatistics, epidemiology, and public health foundations.
- Advanced dissertation research in an area of specialization, either on-site or off-site.
Full program information: