Dalla Lana School of Public Health

MPH Professional Development Seminar Series

Course Description

This seminar course is intended to promote the development of essential professional skills to support on-going learning and workforce preparation for first year MPH Epidemiology students. All of the work for this seminar course will take place within the classroom through a short introductory lecture followed by experiential learning activities and written reflection. The written reflection will be brief and will be completed at the end of class and submitted via Quercus. The goal of the course is to provide opportunities for the development and practice of core competencies related to leadership, communication (written and verbal), knowledge translation, critical reading, and information synthesis. We will also cover issues related to ethics and data use and governance.

Course Objectives

In this course, students will:

• Identify your public health competency strengths and build strategies for competency skill development and improvement.
• Strengthen ability to search, read, and analyse epidemiological literature
• Develop skills to effectively communicate, both verbally and in writing, to a range of audiences
• Develop skills for seeking career opportunities (e.g., CV preparation, interview skills)
• Apply ethical principles related to access, collection, use and dissemination of health data and personal health information (e.g., FAIR and CARE principles).
• Understand community rights to data ownership and governance (e.g., Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession [OCAP])
• Understand the importance of ongoing/life-long learning to continuously improve public health competencies.

This course will be graded as a credit/no credit (CR/NCR) course where attendance and participation is mandatory,  but it will not contribute to the overall credit count.