Message from the Director

Robert Field, PhD
Graduate Program Director for Health Policy

Health policy in the form of government regulation, economic forces, and social factors profoundly affects all organizations and individuals who work in the health care field. In any role, whether that of clinicians, managers, consultants, or researchers, understanding the way policy works is essential to professional success. The Health Policy Program at USP will provide you with the skills needed to do so. Graduates work in responsible positions in a range of organizations, including pharmaceutical companies, consulting firms, and academic research centers.

The health policy program will teach you the set of interdisciplinary skills you need to analyze and understand health policy issues. You will learn to handle issues from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including economics, law, ethics, epidemiology, statistics, and sociology so that you can work with the assortment of professionals whose input is central to the process.

Our program is one of the few to focus specifically on the skills you need to professionally analyze health policy issues. It will train you to understand the influences that shape the provision of health services and the health status of populations. Most competing programs subsume this focus within the broader context of health management. Our program, therefore, offers unique advantages for those who wish to work with the external factors that affect health care organizations — such as government policies, economic trends, and social influences — rather than with internal management concerns. The program is also structured to accommodate the needs of working professionals through a part-time enrollment option and evening courses. We offer one of the only PhD programs in the region with this level of flexibility.

I hope you will learn more about the health policy and public health graduate programs at USP and how we can help you advance your career goals.