Public Health Master of Public Health (Ithaca)

Field of Study

Public Health and Planetary Health

Program Description

Master of Public Health

Cornell’s MPH curriculum is designed to help students build and develop skills in areas that are critical for public health. Different from large undergraduate programs, this professional master’s program is designed to create a ‘community of practice’ where we all push each other to grow and improve, in both traditional public health knowledge areas, and in professional competence (e.g., “soft skills”, “leadership”, “emotional intelligence”, etc.). We are a small cohort of students and core faculty, drawing on expertise from across campus and across the world. At this time, we offer four concentration areas, with interdisciplinary instruction from both researchers and practitioners:

Infectious Disease Epidemiology

Graduates are prepared to manage, prevent, identify, and respond to infectious disease threats, covering ongoing and emerging viral, bacterial, fungal or parasitic disease concerns in both humans and animals. Students learn how to track disease spread, map and disseminate appropriate public health communications, and to lead a coordinated response to address the public health need. This includes training in epidemiological techniques specifically related to infectious diseases and outbreak investigation, as well as training in vector borne diseases.

Food Systems & Health

Students learn to take a systems approach to assess and coordinate policies or interventions that ensure safe and sustainable land use, food production, food storage, food processing, food delivery, and consumption. This includes training in toxicology, food safety, food and water security, and/or nutrition. Students learn how to engage local and global communities to assess systems or needs, develop interventions from a One Health approach, and lead monitoring and evaluation processes to ensure public health needs are being met.

Environment, Climate & Health

Students in the Environment, Climate & Health concentration will become leaders of change. Critically, they will not only learn the downstream, harmful impacts of current behaviors, but will learn how to design, implement, and test interventions at both the local and global levels that promote inter-related human health and environmental health. Students will expand their toolkits by considering externalities and risks, elevating indigenous voices and lived experiences, working collaboratively, and making data-based decisions that recognize tradeoffs and future consequences.

Emergency Preparedness & Management

Students in this concentration will learn the drivers of emergencies and environmental disasters, and the organizational theories, policies, and practices that influence prevention, preparedness, and response. Students will assess and analyze disaster-related risks to community health, spatially map physical and socioeconomic vulnerabilities, anticipate how those risks and vulnerabilities will change over time, and use this understanding to inform response.

Contact Information

Website: https://publichealth.cornell.edu
Email: cornellmph@cornell.edu
Phone: 607-253-4390

Concentrations by Subject

  • food systems and health
  • infectious disease epidemiology

Tuition

Visit the Graduate School's Tuition Rates page.

Application Requirements and Deadlines

Application Deadlines:

Application Deadlines: 

  • Standard Program: May 15th for Fall enrollment
  • Accelerated Program: April 1st for Summer enrollment

Requirements Summary:

Application Requirements

  • Official transcripts
  • Résumé
  • Personal statement that includes what you have experienced in your education, work, or life that is pushing you towards public health
  • Statement of intent that describes why you want to pursue your MPH at Cornell and how our curriculum, faculty, and One Health approach, will help you achieve your professional goals
  • Three (3) letters of reference
  • Cornell Graduate School Quick Application
  • English Language Proficiency Requirement for all applicants

Additional International Student Requirements:

  • Transcript evaluation from WES for foreign transcripts

Additional Accelerated Program Requirements:

A documented advanced health-related degree (MD, DVM, RN, etc.) or substantial professional public health experience.

Learning Outcomes

Learning Outcomes

Cornell’s MPH curriculum is designed to help build and develop competence in performance areas that are critical for public health. Competence is the ability to access and integrate knowledge and skill to do something successfully and efficiently in a given context.

  • Students gain knowledge that is core to public health practice and learn how to continuously build their knowledge base.
  • Students learn specific skills that are strategic for public health practice.
  • Students are pushed to integrate their knowledge and skills to complete projects or address problems from the real world.
  • Students practice ongoing self-assessment and continuous improvement of competence across scenarios and situations.

To demonstrate knowledge and skills, and the ability to integrate and apply them in real-world settings for public good, students complete and submit at least 25 products. Each product has been designed to mimic or build skills towards what you might do ‘on the job’ in a public health setting. These products are developed with a future employer in mind and presented in a portfolio.

View a a full list of MPH competencies (knowledge and skills) our students develop.