As part of Boston University’s on-campus Master of Public Health (MPH) degree, you will choose at least one Functional Certificate as your area of concentration, building upon your interests, strengths and career goals.
Program Management Functional Certificate
In health programs around the world, from Boston to Kenya, managers use their skills to achieve the best results possible when working with diverse communities, supervising staff, overseeing budgets, and designing, planning, and implementing programs. The 16-credit Program Management certificate equips students to lead and manage public health programs in a variety of different settings, with a focus on low-resource environments. In this certificate, you will gain skills in leadership, teamwork, coordinating partnerships and resources, managing and analyzing costs, developing strategic plans for a specific organization, creating quality improvement plans, and much more. You will have the opportunity to focus on programs in global or domestic settings, depending on your interests and goals, and to work with real organizations to help them solve operational challenges in real time.
Upon graduation, students will be able to:
- Demonstrate skills in budget management, including projecting costs, providing justifications, managing and containing costs, and implementing transparent financial management systems.
- Assess organizational challenges and gaps and develop strategic plans, new programs, projects, and other relevant activities to achieve organizational goals.
- Analyze program outcomes to identify needed changes and design monitoring systems to enable program or project evaluation.
- Supervise and support program staff to ensure activities are aligned with overarching goals and on track to meet specific objectives.
- Propose solutions to a variety of program challenges related to human resources, information technology, operating procedures, monitoring and evaluation, and quality improvement.
Sample Course Titles
- GH 755: Managing Disasters
- GH 806: Using Mobile Technologies to Improve Health Outcomes
- GH 854: Data to Dashboards: Building Excel Skills to Support Health Program Decisions
View the BU Bulletin for Course Requirements
Sample Program Management Practicums
- Professionalizing the Direct Support Professionals in Rhode Island to increase Quality and Retention in the Intellectual Developmental Community, Community Provider Network of Rhode Island (Warwick, RI)
- Massachusetts Asthma Action Partnership Intern, Health Resources in Action (Boston, MA)
- Project Coordinator, ElevateX (India)
Integrative Learning Experience (ILE)
People working in program management are frequently asked to write various types of internal and external documents for a wide variety of audiences, including funding proposals, donor reports, annual reports, white papers, case studies, program briefs, etc. The ILE multi-draft process will help you build your professional writing skills and your confidence as a writer. It will also give you practice in receiving and incorporating feedback and a taste of the kinds of tasks you might be asked to do when you are being considered for a job working with a public health organization
