PHOTO: MEGAN JONES

Students

SPH Debuts New PhD in Community Health Sciences

The one-of-a-kind social and behavioral sciences-focused doctoral program will emphasize social justice and community engagement.

The Department of Community Health Sciences at the School of Public Health has launched a new doctoral program to foster scholarship that integrates social and behavioral sciences to promote community wellbeing.

The Doctor of Philosophy in Community Health Sciences at SPH is the fourth program in the country to focus on social justice and the only one of its kind to explicitly train students in community-engaged approaches to health equity research.

Kimberly Nelson, associate professor of community health sciences, will be the inaugural director of the CHS PhD program, which plans to welcome its first cohort of students to campus fall 2026.

“Through advanced study of social and behavioral theories and methodologies, paired with an emphasis on social justice and community collaboration, we aim to produce the next generation of health equity-focused, community health scholars,” says Nelson. “Our students will conduct real-world research grounded in historical, policy, political, social, and cultural contexts and will graduate well-positioned to address some of the most complex public health challenges facing the world today.”

The establishment of the program contributes to two of the School’s strategic priorities—training the next generation of public health practitioners and conducting scholarship of consequence—as well as to the broader goals of the Framing the Future 2030: Education for Public Health initiative by the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health, which called in March 2024 for an increased focus on public health education that integrates social justice and partnerships with affected communities.

The Department of Community Health Sciences will introduce two new courses catering to students enrolled in the program: SB855 Social Justice in Action: Theories and Methods for CHS with Kathryn Thompson, assistant professor of community health sciences, and SB865 Community Engaged Research for Social Justice with Carlos Rodriguez-Diaz, chair and professor of community health sciences.

With applications to the CHS PhD program opening in fall 2025, SPH asked Rodriguez-Diaz to answer a few questions potential applicants may have about the opportunity.

What inspired the creation of the CHS PhD program?

We were examining the uniqueness and diversity within the Department of Community Health Sciences and recognized that we had a great opportunity to offer doctoral-level training, which we were missing due to the absence of a PhD program. It was not only about the opportunity to teach specific courses, but also to engage PhD-level students in the research that we are conducting, to provide mentorship, and to bring the work that we do with communities to the training of PhD-level professionals in public health. As a department, we are rooted in communities. We can maximize investments, collaborations, and well-established partnerships, enabling us to train the next generation of public health professionals in this area. On a side note, when we sat down and decided to pursue this, I encouraged the department to create the PhD program that we all wished we had when we were PhD students.

What kinds of students are you hoping to attract and what kinds of roles would they be prepared to hold after graduation?

We expect to attract motivated and committed professionals who already hold a graduate degree and are interested in working with communities to achieve health equity. We want students who are interested in research and doing research with communities, but also, who are interested in working with communities to identify solutions for their public health issues.

Certainly, as a PhD program, we expect to nurture the next generation of community health scientists who will conduct research with and for communities, promoting social justice. We aim to nurture public health experts who will do scholarly work, teach, and push for the health of all communities. Alumni from this program could also lead public health organizations, programs, or community-based projects. Because of the nature of the school, we can provide training that is local, national, or global. We have faculty who have experience across all of those contexts, so we should be able to attract students who may have different kinds of interests.

Our faculty are diverse in multiple ways, including methodologically, in our health areas of interest, in the communities we collaborate with, and in our own backgrounds, which inform the work that we do. That is important because most students, when they look for a PhD program, have an idea of what they would like to focus on and the skills they would like to gain. Potential students who are looking to work with sexual and gender minorities, youth, families, or in substance use, mental health, food security, preventing violence, cancer, HIV, and so on will find a mentor at SPH.

This program will be different from other doctoral programs at the school and most other programs at other schools of public health in that students will not complete comprehensive exams. Could you explain the reasoning behind that decision?

In part, this is because the methods that have traditionally been used for comprehensive exams do not necessarily reflect the reality of practice and research in public health. Usually, comprehensive exams are a set of specific questions that students are given a certain number of hours or days to respond to. That adds a level of pressure and creates circumstances that are not typical of what would be expected in the day-to-day work of a public health scholar. Because our focus is to assess our students’ learning, attainment of competencies, and readiness to conduct their own independent research, we feel that a two-step process where students are asked to create portfolios of their work and the ways that they have attained, or plan to attain, program competencies is more appropriate. We believe we are proposing a model that is more comprehensive, centered on the student experience, and will accurately assess students’ progress in the program and readiness to move onto the dissertation phase. In fact, researchers at SPH have published evidence suggesting that comprehensive or qualifying exams may not be the most effective method for evaluating students’ readiness to conduct independent research.

There may be people who are interested in this program but feel nervous about their prospects in academia given the widespread cuts to funding in recent months—what would you say to them?

First, academia is a space that, historically, has evolved with humanity [and] will continue to evolve as priorities and policies change. There will always be space for us to educate and to do research. Perhaps the ways we do things and the people we engage with will change, but there are opportunities that come with these changes. Now, more than ever, obtaining training in public health that focuses on social justice and communities is an asset. The field of public health needs us and needs new community health scientists who can engage with communities to build the public health [systems] and interventions that we want and deserve.

It is also a great time to be a student. We have learned from previous experiences that being a student during public health emergencies and crises (e.g., HIV, COVID) provides a unique opportunity to get exposed to the real-world challenges and experiences that better prepare students to face these types of challenges in the future. Pursuing a public health education in this moment is particularly meaningful because there is an opportunity to help shape a brighter future during this tumultuous time.