MPH, Infectious disease

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positivity

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]Hey guys, anyone know of good programs for MPH with a focus on infectious diseases? Also I am trying to gather some info on what this is exactly ...? Very clinically based? From what I understand biostats is very math oriented, (not good at math!) and I know from experience epidemiology is alot of confusing (for me) concepts. So since I'm a medical grad I though I'd go for indfectious diseases? anybody doing that or just has some advice? Thanks in advance!

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Hello,

There are plenty of Infectious Disease MPH programs out there. A few are:
UC Berkeley (http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~microbes/mph/index.html),
Johns Hopkins (http://www.jhsph.edu/academics/degreeprograms/mph/prospective_students/infectious_diseases.html)
Pittsburgh (http://www.idm.pitt.edu/degrees.html#mph)

There are also some general MPH programs that don't require you to pick a particular specialty, and allow you some latitude to choose electives. In both of these types of programs, you will almost always have to take at least one epi class and at least one biostats class, and there's not much chance of getting around that.

For better or for worse (in your case), a lot of infectious disease programs are based out of Epidemiology departments. This is because a lot of the tools you'd use to evaluate risk factors for getting sick, vaccination performance/potential, and so forth, are epidemiological methods. Others are based out of microbiology programs, and I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for either.

You may also be able to find infectious disease programs in Global/International Health departments, and many of these may be focused more on applied work (i.e. control rather than etiology). The same may be true if you can find hospital-based/nosocomial infectious disease programs, but again, some of these are based in epi departments. Some health communication/community health education programs might also allow you to focus on, for example, STDs.

I'm interested to know how you plan to use your MPH - do you want to work in a hospital? Internationally? For CDC? Doing research, being an educator, or overseeing programs? As a physician in private practice? This should help guide you towards (or away from) particular programs.

Hope this helps!
 
Thanks namazu!
I've had a look at Pittsburgh and Berkeley - v. interested in Berkeley. I've been advised by someone to apply for an MPH general tracka nd then decide after getting accepted if I should pick infectious disease, or international health or something... do you think there's any advantage to this or is it better to just apply to the program i want?
What I'm interested in doing is getting my MPH, and then getting residency in internal medicine ... I'm from India but I grew up in Africa and it's my dream to go back there and work with NGO's - helping to develop better health infra-structure in the country I lived in - we really need it cos the AIDS rate is exploding. But I also really enjoy the rapport, the relationships I've developed with patients while working in India which is why I also want to do int medicine.
 
positivity said:
]Hey guys, anyone know of good programs for MPH with a focus on infectious diseases? Also I am trying to gather some info on what this is exactly ...? Very clinically based? From what I understand biostats is very math oriented, (not good at math!) and I know from experience epidemiology is alot of confusing (for me) concepts. So since I'm a medical grad I though I'd go for indfectious diseases? anybody doing that or just has some advice? Thanks in advance!

Boston University has an infectious disease track within the epidemiology concentration. They have several courses in HIV epi and you can take some international health classes as well to add to your knowledge
 
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