Ph.D. students in the Department of Health Policy and Management (HPM) are required to develop expertise in one of three disciplinary concentrations Economics; Organizational Theory and Management; or Political and Policy Analysis and then to apply this discipline to a more specialized area; the latter becomes their area of distinction.

Students are required to complete the course work detailed below, or the equivalent of the topic areas covered in these courses. The course listing represents a suggested program of study. The standard number of courses taken is eighteen, with the option of obtaining credits for previous courses. With the approval of the academic adviser and DGS, alternative courses that better suit the needs of the student may satisfy the course work requirement. The departmental representative to the Graduate Student Executive Committee (GSEC), in conjunction with the student’s adviser, is responsible for determining if core course requirements have been satisfied by previous course work or alternative courses. If so, the student should apply for a course waiver through the Graduate School. HPM students can only waive up to two of the eighteen courses.

Courses required of all students are: EPH 600, Research Ethics and Responsibility (does not count toward the total number of required courses); both terms of HPM 617, Colloquium in Health Services Research (does not count toward the total number of required courses); EPH 508, Foundations of Epidemiology and Public Health; and EPH 608, Frontiers of Public Health. Students entering the program with an M.P.H. degree may be exempt from EPH 508 and EPH 608.

HPM 610, Applied Area Readings, is required of all second-year students. Students are also expected to attend the departmental research seminar for faculty and the doctoral research seminar.

In Methods and Statistics, a minimum of four courses are required from the following: BIS 623, Applied Regression Analysis; BIS 625, Categorical Data Analysis; BIS 628, Longitudinal and Multilevel Data Analysis; SBS 580, Qualitative Research Methods in Public Health; ECON 556, Topics in Empirical Economics and Public Policy; ECON 558, Econometrics; HPM 583, Methods in Health Services Research; PLSC 500, Quantitative Methods I: Research Design and Data Analysis; PLSC 503, Quantitative Methods II: Foundations of Statistical Inference; PLSC 504, Advanced Quantitative Methods; SOCY 580, Introduction to Methods in Quantitative Sociology; SOCY 581, Intermediate Methods in Quantitative Sociology; SOCY 582, Statistics III: Advanced Quantitative Analysis for Social Scientists; S&DS 563, Multivariate Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences; S&DS 565, Applied Data Mining and Machine Learning.

In Health Policy and Management, a minimum of four courses, all with Ph.D. readings, are required from the following: EPH 510, Health Policy and Health Care Systems; HPM 514, Health Politics, Governance, and Policy; HPM 560, Health Economics and U.S. Health Policy; HPM 561, Managing Health Care Organizations; HPM 570, Cost-Effectiveness Analysis and Decision-Making; HPM 573, Advanced Topics in Modeling Health Care Decisions; HPM 587, Advanced Health Economics; HPM 590, Addiction, Economics, and Public Policy; and HPM 597, Capstone Course in Health Policy.