Public Health Imperative: PRESCRIPTION FOR CHANGE - Jackson State University and - Morgan State University launch graduate programs in public health

Black Issues in Higher Education, July 6, 2000 by Ronald Roach

New public-health schools at Black colleges offer chance to graduate more Black students

JACKSON, Miss. -- Growing up ill the Mississippi Delta. Rodrick Jordan saw firsthand how poverty and inadequate health care debilitated and diminished the lives of Black people he knew. That early exposure to deprivation and disease-inspired Jordan to dedicate himself to becoming a physician.

But after pursuing biology and pre-med studies at Jackson State University as an undergraduate, Jordan decided against applying to medical school his senior year in 1998, instead, health-care administration became his goal, and he sought admission to public-health programs at Tulane University and the University of Southern Mississippi. Jordan, a native of Jackson, wanted most to attend a program close to home.

Sometime later, Jordan learned that Jackson State would be launching a master's program in public health in the fall of 1999. "I had no idea this was going to happen," he says. He applied and enrolled in the program.

In the past year, both Jackson State here and Morgan State University in Baltimore have launched ambitious graduate programs in public health. While Jackson State officials are aggressively moving to establish their program as the first school of public health based at a Black institution, Morgan State's program has the distinction of being the first one to grant doctoral degrees in public health at a historically Black institution.

In Baltimore last fall, roughly two dozen students began taking classes as members of that school's newly inaugurated doctoral program in public health. This year, the program has teamed up with other schools on research projects as well as picked up research grants on its own.

"Each faculty member is considered an entrepreneur, and is expected to bring in their own research and funding," says Dr. Yvonne Bronner, director of public-health education at Morgan State.

Jackson State and Morgan State are the newest in a group of five Black schools to offer master's programs in public health. All these programs owe their establishment, in large part, to the growing emphasis that federal and state officials are placing on reducing and eliminating health disparities between racial minorities and White Americans. In recent years, Florida A&M University has established a graduate program in public health. Other public-health programs that grant graduate degrees exist at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta and the Meharry Medical School in Nashville.

Citing both a need for aggressive health initiatives in poor minority communities and a shortage of trained minority health professionals, officials are looking to these state-school programs to have a significant-impact on minority health at the national level.

"There is an under-representation of minorities at the doctoral level in this field, and addressing that would enable us to tackle minority health disparties more effectively," says Dr. Earl Richardson, president of Morgan State University.

Morgan's Practitioner Approach

In the eyes of many, the focus on health disparities is long overdue.

"The fruits of the civil rights movement have not moved into the health-care arena," says Dr. Jay Carrington Chunn, Morgan State's associate vice president for academic affairs.

The recent move to expand public health education shows that Black school officials are taking seriously the goals set forth by U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher in his Healthy People 2010 plan. Satcher is the first Black male to hold the post.

"The plan has two goals: to increase the years and quality of healthy life, and to eliminate disparities in health based on race and ethnicity," Satcher told the Morgan State community at the February convocation of the new doctoral program.

Back in the early 1990s, it became clear to Chunn that traditional public-health initiatives by local, state and federal governments were failing within Black communities. Woefully ineffective efforts were being made to stem the tide of a growing HIV/AIDS epidemic, lessen gun violence and reduce the incidence of behavior-sensitive diseases, such as heart, lung and kidney ailments.

Chunn, who had signed on with Morgan State in 1993, saw that part of the problem was rooted in the traditional research approach taught to doctoral students in public health. He sought to rectify the problem.

"The reason why I conceptualized the idea for this program was that AIDS was running rampant ... as well as cancer, heart disease and the advent of urban violence," in Black communities, Chunn says.

Chunn theorized that a doctoral program producing public-health practitioners rather than researchers could have a more decisive impact upon public-health policy. The practice-oriented doctoral and master's students would be trained to help solve health problems prevalent in poor minority urban communities based on the community-oriented focus of the degree program. Graduates also would be advocates of prevention-oriented solutions to health problems.