{"id":17755,"date":"2023-08-01T14:41:46","date_gmt":"2023-08-01T18:41:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/?p=17755"},"modified":"2023-08-03T11:42:37","modified_gmt":"2023-08-03T15:42:37","slug":"geisel-school-of-medicine-welcomes-new-public-health-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/2023\/geisel-school-of-medicine-welcomes-new-public-health-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Geisel School of Medicine Welcomes New Public Health Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, the Geisel School of Medicine welcomed candidates enrolled in its residential and hybrid Master of Public Health (MPH) and Master of Science in Healthcare Research (MS) programs to campus for their orientation sessions, which served as a kickoff to a new academic year. Geisel\u2019s MPH degree program is offered in two formats: 11 months on campus or 22 months online with a week-long, on-campus session three times per year.<\/p>\n

After extending a warm welcome to the candidates, Geisel Dean Duane Compton, PhD, said, \u201cWe\u2019re excited to start this educational journey with you. First of all, let me thank you for actually choosing a profession that is designed to help people. This is one of the most noble things you can decide to do in your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Craig Westling, DrPH, MPH, MS, executive director of education for the MPH and MS programs at Geisel, remembered his first day as a student. \u201cI was pretty jacked up but also nervous meeting all of my peers and teammates and wondered if I really belonged here.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou totally belong here, every one of you,\u201d he emphasized. \u201cWe\u2019re so glad that you\u2019ve decided to join us. You\u2019re going to meet everyone in your cohort and you\u2019re going to know all of your faculty members\u2014it\u2019s what we think makes the programs at Dartmouth so special, just how intimate the whole learning environment is. And part of that is how much you\u2019ll learn from each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Photos by Rob Strong<\/em><\/p>\n

Westling told the students, \u201cEach of you wrote an essay about why you wanted to come here and join this program, and if you think of it in terms of the challenge that we\u2019re facing it\u2019s really an economic existential challenge. In the U.S., healthcare is about 20 percent of our GDP\u2014public health is a teeny sliver of that, somewhere between 3-6 percent.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur incentives are in the wrong places,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe\u2019re treating illness, we\u2019re treating acute episodes, as opposed to trying to keep people healthy. Now, there\u2019s lots of things we can do; public health is so broad. One of the things we want you to do while you\u2019re here is focus on things that you want to do afterwards, focus on pieces of the solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students began working on just that in an interactive session entitled, \u201cThe Challenge of Now,\u201d led by Elliott Fisher, MD, MPH, a professor of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and clinical Practice, medicine, and community and family medicine, who introduced them to three foundational skills in public health\u2014epidemiology, systems thinking, and public narrative.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Dartmouth Institute is fundamentally about striving to improve health and healthcare,\u201d explained Fisher. \u201cThe most obvious way we do this is by learning to be more effective leaders in teams and organizations. In any of this work, it is essential to motivate others to join us. Public narrative or story telling is a powerful and effective way to do this, as stories help us understand the world, construct our identities, clarify our values, and make ethically sound choices.\u201d<\/p>\n

For part of the session, Fisher asked the students to break into pairs to practice a two-minute \u201cstory of self,\u201d explaining to classmates why they are working to make a difference in healthcare and then offering each other feedback on how to improve it. They then reconvened for a large group discussion, with many students sharing their thoughts about the exercise.<\/p>\n

\u201cOften times in healthcare and science we tend to stress and even prefer numbers,\u201d said Robert E. Braylock, PharmD, MBA, a hybrid MPH candidate. \u201cI think this exercise helped us to really understand the power of narratives in telling stories and really drawing in audiences to understand the importance and impact of our work.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to their curriculum sessions and coursework the students participated in a number of team building and social activities through the week, including a scavenger hunt on campus, an ice cream social, and a cookout with new medical students at Geisel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, the Geisel School of Medicine welcomed candidates enrolled in its residential and hybrid Master of Public Health (MPH) and Master of Science in Healthcare Research (MS) programs to campus for their orientation sessions, which served as a kickoff to a new academic year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":17756,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[626,370,45],"class_list":["post-17755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-mph","tag-orientation","tag-tdi","author-26"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/08\/MPHOrientation_featured.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-4Cn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17755"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17784,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17755\/revisions\/17784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}