MPH Functional Certificate: Environmental Hazard Assessment

The environment, including water supply, air, food, sanitation, and climate change, is a central determinant of population health nationally and globally. Industrially produced and consumer product chemicals, air pollutants, micro-organisms, radiation, and noise are a few of the many environmental hazards that need to be identified, assessed, and controlled in order to reduce the global burden of disease.

This certificate provides students with state-of-the-art practice tools for understanding and evaluating the toxicology and health effects of environmental hazards and the risks associated with exposure. Students collect primary environmental data, learn methods for assessing exposure to environmental hazards, and will be introduced to geographic mapping techniques for understanding relationships and patterns in exposure and disease (GIS).

Upon graduation, students will be able to:

  • Collect and analyze environmental data and articulate the characteristics of major chemical, physical, and biological hazards.
  • Interpret measured or modeled concentrations or doses of hazards compared with risk-based and non-risk based criteria and guidelines.
  • Evaluate the influence of susceptibility based on a hazards’ biological mode of action, and vulnerability on health risks for major environmental determinants of human disease.
  • Identify defensible intervention and prevention strategies to improve health through reduction in exposures to environmental hazards.
  • Critically assess articles related to environmental impacts on health, analyzing the strength and validity of the hypothesis, study design and methods, results, conclusions, and public health significance of primary research studies.

Course Requirements

  • EH 730 Methods in Environmental Health Sciences (4 cr)
  • EH 705 Toxicology for Public Health (2 cr)
  • EH 707 Physiology for Public Health (2 cr)
  • Choose 8 credits from the following:
    • EH 757 Environmental Epidemiology (4 cr)
    • EH 804 Exposure Assessment (4 cr)
    • EH 811 Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in Public Health (4 cr)
    • EH 840 Advanced and Emerging Topics in Toxicology (4 cr)
    • EH 866 Risk Assessment Methods (4 cr)

Integrative Learning Experience

The ILE will involve writing a policy memo for a defined stakeholder group. The student will work on a case study either based on a case from a project-based class (e.g., Exposure Assessment, Risk Assessment) or an idea developed independently, in either case approved by the certificate director.