New UNC DrPH Health Leadership Consortium

UNC’s Doctoral Program in Health Leadership – the world’s first distance DrPH program – prepares mid-career professionals for senior-level positions in organizations working domestically and internationally to improve the public’s health.

The three-year, cohort-based distance program confers a DrPH in Health Administration. With the exception of three short visits to Chapel Hill in each of years one and two, learning takes place in participants’ homes and offices, away from the UNC campus. Students connect to the faculty and peers mainly via computer, making substantial use of state-of-the-art technology that allows students and faculty to interact productively and which supports live video, audio, and data sharing.

The distance format allows working professionals to complete doctoral leadership training while continuing full-time employment, remaining in-country throughout the duration of their education. The success of our model has been documented by program evaluations during the past three years and via demonstrated progress of students in the program.

Building upon this innovative model, we now aim to accelerate the pace and reach of urgently needed doctoral-level leadership training for senior health professionals around the world by creating an international network of partner programs. Work has been initiated to develop a global DrPH health leadership consortium. Members will share curriculum and technology best practices, faculty and school resources, encourage student exchange, and function as a unified network, collaborating with public and private stakeholders on strategic efforts to build health leadership and management capacity within the U.S. and globally. Students will be able to take selected core courses from any partner school for credit.

Individual schools will be able to modify the UNC curriculum to reflect specialized interests and/or expertise.

We hope to convene a meeting comprised of a small group of potential program partners and other distance education and DrPH experts in late 2008 or early 2009 in Chapel Hill to discuss consortium goals, core requirements and academic programming issues, identify and address barriers and opportunities, and discuss logistics and next steps.

For more information, contact Suzanne Havala Hobbs, DrPH, Program Director at suzanne_hobbs@unc.edu.