Office of Public Health Practice

Newsletter

Welcome to the Office of Public Health Practice, an initiative launched at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in 2005. This office was developed to bring greater visibility and emphasis to the School of Public Health's focus on building the practice of public health.

Our mission is several fold; to facilitate exposure of our students and faculty to public health practice; to adequately prepare our students for careers in governmental and community-based public health; to insure the existing public health workforce avails itself of the School's resources; and to develop a rigorous program of practice-based research at the School of Public Health. We accomplish this mission through the many partnerships and programs in the Office of Public Health Practice that follow:

Applied Research

A goal of the Practice Office is to facilitate joint academic-practitioner research opportunities and insure this research is actively applied to the practice of public health. Ultimately, these enhanced research connections will result in a public health system with greater use of evidence-based practice, an improved workforce, and increased practice-based training for future practitioners.

Education

Providing hands-on public health practice experience for UM SPH students is a priority of the Office of Public Health Practice. A limited number of paid internships located in governmental and non-governmental public health agencies within the state of Michigan in all public health areas are coordinated by the office.

UM SPH also houses one of the oldest Preventive Medicine Residency programs in the country, dating back to 1969. Public health rotations through state and local health departments provide physician residents with real world public health experience.

Lifelong Learning

The Office of Public Health Practice, in collaboration with its partners, seeks to develop a comprehensive, strategic, statewide plan for public health workforce training designed to ensure improved workforce capacity in Michigan. Training initiatives of the office, including the Michigan Public Health Training Center and the Michigan Center for Public Health Preparedness, currently focus on competency-based training of individual public health workers and will begin to address the organizational capacity of health departments.

The Office of Public Health Practice works closely with the Michigan Department of Community Health, the Michigan Association for Local Public Health, and other governmental and community-based partners to identify training needs and define applicable training competencies and performance standards expected of the public health workforce.

Matthew L. Boulton, M.D., M.P.H.

• Associate Dean for Practice
• Associate Professor of Epidemiology
• Director, Preventive Medicine Residency
• Principal Investigator , Michigan Center for Public Health Preparedness, Michigan Public Health Training Center