practice

SPH Launches Assessment of Practice Activities

Led by the School’s Practice Advisory Committee, the year-long initiative will offer a broader reflection of where and how public health practice takes place at SPH.

Over the next year, and for the first time ever, the School of Public Health is embarking on a comprehensive review of all practice activities to offer a broader reflection of where and how public health practice takes place at SPH.

The initiative is being led by the School’s Practice Advisory Committee (PAC), which is co-chaired by Craig Andrade, associate dean for practice and director of the Activist Lab at SPH, and David Jernigan, assistant dean for practice and professor of health law, policy & management, and is made up of representatives from each academic department, the Activist Lab, the Office of Graduate Student Life, the Career and Practicum Office, the Office of Lifelong Learning, and the student body.

“Our students come to SPH because of our Think. Teach. Do. ethos, our education, our research, and our practice,” says Andrade. “To ensure that we have an integrated, coordinated approach to practice that is serving our students, our community, and the field at large, we need to be able to have a good accounting of what we are doing, where it is happening, and how we could improve, and we need to engage our entire community in the process.”

Throughout the next year, representatives on the PAC will distribute a survey developed by the committee to their respective units to learn more from faculty and staff about what public health practice means to the department, what practice-focused activities faculty, staff, and/or students within the unit are engaging in, and ways in which they believe the unit is conducting practice well and where it could be improved.

The PAC hopes that the survey questions will allow faculty and staff to reframe the way they view public health practice at the School, and to think more creatively about how their work fits into the practice framework at SPH.  

“We really want this process to be a conscious redefining of what public health practice means at the School,” says Emily Barbo, assistant director of the Activist Lab and the Activist Lab representative on the PAC. “The Activist Lab has been given a lot of really important attention over the years, but we know that the Activist Lab is not the only place that practice happens at SPH. It happens in our academic departments and non-academic units; it is weaved throughout all that we do, and we want to celebrate and acknowledge that, while also learning more about areas in which we can grow.”

Data gathered throughout the survey process will be reported back to the PAC during their quarterly meetings. Once all units have reported their survey findings, the committee plans to compile a comprehensive report to provide the community with a vivid picture of the state of public health practice at the School, as well as identify opportunities for future growth. The report will be published on the SPH website and will be available to all SPH faculty, staff, and students, as well as outside community members.

In addition to this broader reimagining of practice SPH, the PAC sees this comprehensive report as an opportunity for community-wide networking and cross-departmental partnerships to thrive.

“We want this document to not only be a one-stop-shop of information for our community, but we also want it to be a bridge that leads to more meaningful collaborations, community partnerships, and student projects and practica,” says Jernigan. “We have an incredible opportunity to help our community narrow down and define their public health practice while also sharing the story of SPH and finding new ways to push it forward.”

The PAC hopes that the report will also have wider implications for the future of public health and public health practice, as the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH), the accrediting body for schools of public health, has started to shift their focus more toward practice and understanding where and how it is happening within schools across the country.

“This report can serve as a great guide for informing our educational and research practices at SPH, as well as how we can think more inclusively, more equitably, and from a community-focused lens in our practice work in the future,” says Andrade. “It can also be a great guide for other institutions to think more broadly about how advancing practice within their own work can influence the next generation of public health practitioners.”

Once finalized in late 2022, the published report will be a living document that internal and external community members can refer to as needed, and that is expected to evolve and grow to continually meet the needs of SPH.

“This is the first time that we are doing an in-depth review of our practice work,” says Caroline McQuade, operations associate at the Activist Lab and the PAC secretary, “and we hope that by engaging our entire community in this process, we can learn and understand more about the great work that is happening here at SPH and figure out ways that we can make it ever-better together.”

If you have not already, you can expect to hear from your PAC representative about taking part in the practice review survey soon.