Morgan Public Health Program Wins Accreditation

“Affirms quality of our program,” says Director Yvonne Bronner

The Morgan State University Public Health Program is now a fully accredited public health graduate institution. The full accreditation comes after a site visit late last year by a team from the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH), an independent agency empowered by the U.S. Department of Education to evaluate and certify public health schools and graduate programs. In addition to observing facilities and interviewing students, faculty and staff, the team reviewed ten criteria, including administrative practices, academic systems and mechanisms to ensure community service.

“This accreditation affirms the quality of our program and validates the process for developing competent public health graduates and professionals,” says Dr. Yvonne Bronner, director of the Public Health Program. “It is a marvelous achievement for a program that is as young as this.”

Morgan’s Public Health Program was created in 1999 as an urban, practice-based graduate program in response to calls for public health education to increase the number of practitioners trained at the doctoral level. The following year, the program was one of only three research-training sites to be funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Scholars and Health Disparities Program for post-doctoral fellowships. Also in 2000, the Public Health Program was one of two sites to be awarded institutional research training grants by the National Institutes of Health National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) to train minority researchers and practitioners in scientific research approaches to CAM.

The CEPH team commended Morgan’s Public Health Program for its physical attributes, noting a number of strengths in the facilities that support student learning, such as its computer labs and the student resource center. “This is a vibrant program whose mission fulfills an urgent need for public health,” said the CEPH team’s report. “The site visit team was extremely impressed by the curriculum and the rigor with which the doctoral students are trained.”

According to Dr. Bronner, the Public Health Program at Morgan State University is dedicated to cutting edge developments in public health research and committed to addressing the public health needs of urban, minority communities. Since its inception, 19 students have completed the program at the Master’s level and there have been 10 Doctoral graduates. Morgan State University is the first historically black college or university (HBCU) to offer a doctoral degree in public health.

Morgan State University, founded in 1867, is a coeducational institution offering more than 60 academic programs leading to bachelor’s degrees as well as programs at the master’s and doctoral levels. As Maryland’s public urban university, Morgan serves a multi-ethnic and multi-racial student body and seeks to ensure that the doors of higher education are opened as wide as possible to as many as possible. For more information on Morgan State University, visit www.morgan.edu.