- On-campus Program (Longwood Campus)
- 42.5 Credits Required to Graduate
- Thesis Required: mentor from home institution required for admission (please see below)**
- Program is run between July-August
- Can be completed in 3 Summers
- Previous STEM Experience Required (i.e. MDs, PhDs, or Master Level)
The Summer option/42.5 Credit is designed for applicants with a medical degree or master’s-level background in relevant disciplines (e.g., biology, chemistry, genetics, physiology, bioengineering, and related social and computational sciences) and can be completed over 3 summer semesters. Thesis proposal and local mentor is required for application. A Thesis is required for this degree. The program begins with either the Summer Program in Clinical Effectiveness or the Session for Public Health Studies.
**The GRE is recommended but not required for the degree application. Applicants that are not submitting GRE scores should be able to show quantitative skills in other areas of their application (ie: transcripts, research experience, letters of recommendation). If you have questions about this, please contact Eric DiGiovanni at edigiova@hsph.harvard.edu
Questions regarding this program can be directed to either our Faculty Director, Pamela Rist (prist@mail.harvard.edu) or our program administrator Jeffrey Noyes (jnoyes@hsph.harvard.edu).
**Applicants to the Summer Only 42.5 credit Master of Science degree are required to submit a one page thesis/research project proposal and identify a mentor at their home institution within their SOPHAS application. The thesis proposal should include a description of what the applicant might pursue for a thesis and identify the applicant’s mentor from their home institution including name, title, and contact information. The proposal will not be reviewed for scientific merit, only feasibility.**
Degree Competencies
At the end of the program, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate basic skills in core public health sciences of epidemiology and biostatistics.
- Develop comprehensive knowledge of the role of epidemiology as a basic science for public health and clinical medicine to provide a quantitative approach to addressing public health and clinical problems.
- Interpret descriptive epidemiologic results in order to develop hypotheses of possible risk factors for a disease.
- Critically evaluate public health and medical literature through knowledge gained of the basic principles and methods of epidemiology, including disease (outcome) measures, measures of association, study design options, bias, confounding, and effect measure modification.
- Develop a foundation for designing valid and efficient protocols to address public health and clinical problems.
- Apply quantitative skills to analyze and synthesize epidemiologic data related to public health issues.
- Design, implement, analyze and/or summarize an epidemiologic research project.
For further information, please visit the Clinical Epidemiology webpage for important details on this program.
