Master of Science in Public Health

About the MSPH Program
This program is designed for individuals who are or who plan to become professional health workers, and who wish to acquire advanced training in parasitology. Graduates will have the necessary training to participate in the design, planning, coordination, and execution of laboratory and field investigations. Further, graduates will be qualified to assist in public education programs about the causes, prevention and control of parasitic disease. As described in the MPH&TM program, students may select courses related to malaria or other vector-borne diseases and their control.

Graduates of the MSPH degree program will be able to:

• Assist in planning and carrying out field research projects on tropical diseases in endemic areas.
• Assist in planning, implementing, and monitoring programs for the control of tropical diseases in endemic areas.
• Instruct inhabitants of areas endemic for tropical diseases about the different infectious agents present in the community, how those infections are acquired, and relevant personal preventive measures, and community-wide control strategies.
• Detect and identify parasites in clinical specimens.
• Instruct technicians and technologists in the methods used and the skills required to detect and identify parasites, and to diagnose other important tropical infections in clinical specimens.
• Supervise an infectious disease diagnostic laboratory in a hospital, clinic or local, regional or national governmental health agency.

Operational skills that will be acquired include the ability to perform laboratory procedures for the diagnosis of parasitic and other tropical infections, epidemiologic and demographic studies for the prevention and control of parasitic diseases and the critical analysis of information related to parasitic infections, techniques employed in experimental research and basic statistical treatment of data.

Many students who enter the MSPH program in parasitology do so with the intention of working toward an advanced degree at a later time. This program provides a sound background for students who would like to work for advanced degrees in parasitology or other public health-related programs in the infectious diseases.