Health Policy Program Requirements & Standards
Since the field of health policy draws upon information from many areas, the USP program is interdisciplinary by nature. It requires you to analyze issues creatively by combining different approaches to policy problems.
In addition to a core of courses offered directly in health policy, you may take courses in several other fields and programs, including pharmacy administration, pharmacoeconomics, pharmaceutical business, biomedical writing, and social sciences. In the same way, research opportunities cut across disciplinary lines to draw on differing kinds of expertise. USP offers two degrees in health policy:
MS Degree
The goal of the MS degree track is to train you to become a practitioner of health policy analysis. You will become skilled at analyzing issues and predicting outcomes for industry, government, trade associations, and consulting firms. You can pursue interests in substantive health care issue areas through electives.
The program also emphasizes practical training outside of the university environment through internships and team consulting projects for external organizations.
You must complete 36 credits of didactic coursework, including a field applications project for an outside organization and a master's paper. You will also complete a part-time internship for a health care organization, unless you have concurrent or past work experience in a health care-related setting.
PhD Degree
The PhD degree program is designed to train researchers who will make original contributions to understanding the provision of health care and health status. Doctoral training is applicable in academic and applied business settings. As in the master's program, the emphasis is on skills training, with substantive issues pursued through electives and through dissertation research.
You will take many of the same courses as master's students but will complete more advanced coursework in statistics and in research methodology, in addition to your dissertation.
The degree track leading to the doctor of philosophy (PhD) degree in health policy covers the skills needed to conduct original research on issues affecting the provision of health care and health status. You are required to:
- Complete 48 credits of didactic coursework
- Achieve a satisfactory grade on a doctoral qualifying examination
- Register for HP899 (Doctoral Research) for a minimum of 20 credits
- Complete a dissertation.
The skills and substantive areas taught include:
- Overall structure of the health care industry, including insurance reimbursement, managed care, hospital physician relationships, health system development, and pharmaceutical development
- Health economics
- Epidemiology
- Information technology in health policy
- Financial modeling
- Public health research involving large-scale databases
- Public policy analysis
- Legal and regulatory analysis related to health care
- Ethical issues in health care and public policy
Your research opportunities will cover a range of health policy topics. Several large databases that contain information on health care and pharmacy utilization are available for student projects. They represent unique resources for statistical analyses. Other kinds of research projects may involve outcomes analyses of medical interventions and case studies of health policy initiatives.
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