 Well, hello everybody. It's Memorial Day weekend. Hi everybody. It's Monaco ahi It's May 28th, and it's noon in Boston, and I hope everybody is doing well today and today's Livestream is going to be about The masters in public health programs and the reason why I wanted to do this live stream on Masters in public health programs is because I Get a lot of questions about masters in public health programs and people who want to go for their MPH And what's kind of interesting is, you know, I've always been into data, but I graduated with my MPH in 2003 and at that point If you were in public health or you were getting your MPH Data was seen as like biostatistics and I'm Okay at biostatistics, but what I'm really good at is informatics and data science You know what we now call data science and so I I was an epidemiologist with these this informatics stuff And I call myself an epi informatic and epi informatic is but there really wasn't a place for me and Now like the AMIA the American Medical Informatics Association didn't really have a public health Section or anything in the early 2000s like so much has happened In the last 20 years But the MPH has always been there like it was already there in the early 2000s like MPH programs education programs to lead you to get knowledge about public health And so you could go work and jobs in public health jobs. So That was always there So then this data science stuff happened and now when people talk about getting their MPH They're not just thinking about oh, I wanted to go do design studies or I want to You know work at a public health department They're also thinking about data science and so I wanted to really talk about the difference between like an MPH a master's in public health like What it means when you join that program and what you're getting into Versus another master's program. That's not in a public health area Like you could get an MBA or you could go get a computer science degree, you know If you're into data science if you're into public health, you probably want to get an MPH But then is an MPH at one place the same as at the other So that's what we're gonna sort of get into here and and I just get a lot of questions about MPH is and I Steer a lot of people into MPH programs. I steer them like help them graduate from them I tell them not to take them. I tell them to take them I give them advice So that's why I thought you'd find this helpful. Alright, so now I'm gonna turn on the chat overlay You know, I've been having trouble with the chat, right? Like everybody knows that so Um, if you try to chat and you don't see it on the chat overlay, I'm sorry, you know, um, I Don't know what went wrong But I think there's better luck chatting on YouTube than on LinkedIn, although I have seen chance on LinkedIn so I don't know what to say and If you're what if you want to watch this after I you know as a recording It's probably easier to watch it on YouTube because I can put in the links and you can Navigate around. All right, so now I'm gonna share my screen and I'm gonna share My slide presentation, which hopefully I plan to give you a link to when we After I put the description in so this is my Presentation how to join an MPH program So this presentation is gonna take me a while because even though I'm gonna go over two main things which is You know the the background of public health education, especially I'm gonna focus on the US but I'm also gonna talk internationally about other countries because remember it's public health, right so Like if you enter the military you're training for probably a government job Like maybe someday you'll work as a security guard or something But if you enter the military you're probably gonna work for the government and for the longest time Public health education was sort of seen that way like if you if you learn it you're probably gonna work for government public health Although that has changed, you know, that slowly started to change, you know, because now we need these skills for different things You know, but in any case It's really important to understand how these programs are developed these public health Education programs are developed with the thinking of we're trying to serve the public's health Versus are you gonna have the skills you need to do these jobs? You know what I mean because so that's why the first part of this might be a little bit like Philosophical and heady, and you'll be like really I need to know all this you kind of do because Whether you're in the US and you're from the US or you're outside the US We are known for certain things public health things, right? We are known for our COVID-19 response We are known for our gun violence. We are known for our racism like internationally And so and these things all affect our public health So if you're shopping for a program you're thinking and and you don't live in the US And you're thinking coming to the US to study or using a US public health Program, you know, you have to sort of think well the US doesn't have very good public health and Everybody who's in charge of it has been trained through these programs You know what's really going on and so that's what this is about is what's really going on and How do you as a student whether you're inside the US or outside the US? Try to use a US system or some other training system around the world to learn about public health If you want to and then I'll give you just practical information about how to apply for US schools in public health US masters programs, which I'm pretty good at helping people do alright So first I'm going to talk about accredited public health schools Now I'm going to first talk about the US and in the US This is how we accredited our public health schools, okay? We have a thing called the Council on Education for Public Health or CEPH and when you go and get these slides You can go to these links where I've explained what the CEPH is and give you links, okay? So this council Those of you who are like a nursing or medicine or whatever, you know, you have to get your schools accredited to So you have Like in nursing there's different accreditation Agencies and they all have these rules about how you fill out this packet and what stuff you have to have in your program Whatever and then they go through this process of crediting the school Well in public health in the US. It is only the CEPH that does this. There's no choices Yeah, like if you're accredited by the CEPH or you're not, okay So what is the CEPH a credit? Well, they they credit two things they credit schools and Programs and it's a little hard to tell the difference. You don't really need to know the difference I mean, they need to know the difference. I'll give you two examples, right? Like I put it on the slide The University of Minnesota School of Public Health is a school That's accredited and also the University of South Florida College of Public Health It's also accredited by the CEPH. So these schools are accredited Um You may I just mentioned both of these schools in the same breath the College of Public Health the University Of South Florida and the University of Minnesota School of Public Health In fact, you might even think from the name college sounds bigger than school But I'll tell you the University of Minnesota School of Public Health has so many faculty Like so many if you're the kind of person who's looking for somebody who connects with you You should be going to University of Minnesota because there's so many faculty there at the University of South Florida There's hardly any faculty. It's a tiny college there so so You have to look at each one. So just because it says school doesn't mean it's big, but it does mean it's a school now tough University in Boston has a medical school But they don't have a public health like college or school like something named like school of public health or college So they have a program where they teach the same thing you can get a master's degree in public health So that's what the ASPPH is the associations of schools and programs in public health They're the ones who are currently accredited by the CEPH and And so once you get accredited like once the University of Minnesota's program got accredited. I mean you can technically get Unaccredited like if you become bad, but I've never seen it happen. I mean, maybe it has happened. I I didn't do any research I've never seen the CPH Unaccredited school like if you are watching this are you Listening to this and you know, I'm wrong like they've done it a school or a program Please put it in the comments because I'd like to hear the back story because I I haven't really seen that I haven't seen the CEPH really make sure that their accredited schools are performing well In a heavy-handed way. I've just never seen that. Okay but I have seen that you have to fill out all this paperwork to get your school accredited and Our program and also there's not that many I mean when I say there's not that many maybe there's a hundred at the most In the US at any given time. It's not like, you know, if you want to study psychology or something. All right Okay, so why did I just go into this big deal about accredited schools is Because even international students should not go to unaccredited public health schools now I'm just talking about the US if You're in the US and you can find an unaccredited public health school that the CPH did not Accredited don't go there. It's just not good. Okay, if you're an International student or you're a domestic US student You want to go study public health internationally because I just heard what I just said on the last line You're like I want to look at a better school Please understand that the other countries also kind of do the same thing we do is They make their governments try to make sure their public health training is good So you're gonna want to make sure that whatever school you go to internationally is actually accredited now What happens is often these? Countries feel very weak, right? Like I remember when I visited Egypt I was meeting some public health doctors and they they apologized to me. They're like, we're sorry our public health so Low level and simple compared to you. I mean this is Egypt and they're apologizing to me and the from the No, they're public all those great, right? Like I mean it's as good as it can be just like ours is as good as it can be which and it's not even awesome here, you know So I don't apologize, you know, like whatever country you're from You should be proud of whatever public health you're doing You should just try to you know do something better with it But the problem is a lot of countries will look to the US or to the United Kingdom Or to Canada and try to use those accreditation Tactics to credit their own Colleges thankfully Saudi Arabia does not do that They have the NC AAA that accredits all of their their colleges. It's their own countries Organization which is great and and you kind of need to do that So the short answer is if you are seeking a public health college or program Not in the US Figure out what that country does to accredits its programs and make sure you go to an accredited one And if you're in the US and trying to pick a program you got to go to one That's accredited by the CE pH, okay, and if you're like well Monica, I don't have a lot of money and Here's an unaccredited program. It's cheap I'll tell you why it's a scam. It's a scam because Even these accredited programs, it's hard to find teachers who even know the material even know how to do biostatistics and Epidemiology correctly like for some reason it's sort of rare information like being able to teach that and so if you go to an unaccredited program you're just not going to learn and Also, if you do if you are like especially international students, you know from outside the US You're looking for an master in public health degree to work for your government those governments Don't want you getting some crappy degree that that's unaccredited in whatever country with them So you really need to get an accredited one, you know, I haven't seen if anybody's in the chat No All right, so we'll go back here Um, if you if you are asking a question and I don't see it I'll go back later and I'll look on LinkedIn and also on YouTube See if I can figure out. All right So now I'm going to speak specifically about how you cause an MPH to be accredited in the US and how you do it if if you're like, let's say you're an educator and you work at a US University and you're like, hey, I want to create an accredited public health Education program like the ASPPH, you know Um, what I will tell you is the general I've never done this but the general idea Is you have to make sure that the Program the two-year program covers these core competencies which I put on the slide which I took from their website Uh, and I'll just read them. They're a little small And if you go to their website like you can see that there's a drop-down that explains each of them But this is what the core competencies are their bio statistics environmental health sciences epidemiology health policy and management social and behavioral sciences communication and informatics diversity and culture leadership public health biology professionalism program planning and systems thinking So I that's a huge list and so if you think about it in two years You know, maybe you have one two three four Um like semesters right like if you have summer maybe a few more semesters, but you've got to cover all this and The accredited program has filled out paperwork to prove that they've got classes and in two years They'll cover all this and what that means is in your MPH you really can't specialize that much Because regardless of whether you say oh, I want to be in maternal child health or infectious disease You're going to be covering all of these basic things So you just won't have much of an opportunity to take electives You know, you kind of can but not a lot Like if you want to get your phd in epidemiology your biosatistics or something that's where you really learn more You know in in the u.s in in courses Um, but this is mostly you're going to be learning content about the top chronic and infectious diseases And then you're going to be learning the skills like the epidemiology biosatistics. How do you do health promotion? How do you do interventions? How do you make health care policy public health policy? How do you deal with environmental issues? And they started adding leadership and inclusion, you know, I've been following this for years the last 20 years Um and and elevating that a little bit more all right So I I advocate that it's going to sound like I'm giving you a mixed message I advocate for anybody Who wants to get an mph to get an mph from an accredited u.s program? It's just not not any old accredited u.s program If you can find an accredited u.s program that is actually good That's actually a quality program. That's worth its money Then you should go to it But don't look at u.s accredited programs and say, oh, they're all good. No No, that's the problem Is that remember I said that maybe there'll be a hundred. There's probably not a hundred. It's probably close to 70 or something You basically have to you know in among those there's only a handful that I would consider are any good Any good at all like you pay tuition You have an mph experience And when you're done, you're ready for a job Okay very few and so um and before the pandemic The ceph has historically discouraged online education and mphs But they started getting relaxing that as online education got better like 2015 2016 And then after the pandemic of course a lot of things and and they started even before the pandemic There were all online programs that were accredited mphs But as you all probably know, it's very it's much easier to have crappy education online than then in person like if you're in person You know, you almost can't help learn something from a teacher who's not that good But somebody you know online a teacher is not that good and they don't know the material you're you're really not going to learn it. So um So even though these programs will be set up for international students and they'll be um accredited and um, they'll be like uh You know like you could take them online and whatever A lot of these programs the training was low quality like A long time ago It was low quality before 2010 And a lot of these people are still teaching in the same programs and and the training was low quality So with online it's worse And so I guess this is a big picture of saying um, you've got to be very careful When you shop for an mph program in the us There are more bad one accredited ones. There are more bad ones than good ones. And so you've just got to be very careful So I I put a picture of a person on slide saying If the programs are accredited why is the training such low quality? Right like isn't that like the million dollar question. Let me see if anybody's got any questions here on that chat Um, no, I don't see any questions. All right. Let's see. I'll go back here So so why is that right? So you probably are thinking, um Well, maybe there's a problem with the accreditation system You know, maybe a problem with these systems and and that's it So this is where it gets a little Heady, but this applies to public health. So if you want to get your mph You probably want to know the history of public health, right? So those of you who study like, um um Like medicine You know modern medicine the history of modern medicine goes back to the 1800s and those of you who Um, listen to my lectures like I have a kind of popular lecture on the history of healthcare in the us Um, you know that like our hospitals our first hospitals in the us were in the late 1800s By contrast And and also they were they teaching medical students that they were medical schools like Harvard medical school and University of Minnesota medical school. They've been around since then but by contrast Public health as a discipline really did not get organized until about like the 1970s like the late 1970s 1980s in fact, um the university of minnesota The school of public health that's there now was the I think it was called the laboratory of industrial hygiene or some weird name like that in the 70s and it was If you're if you're an alumni and you know this better like you worked They're like definitely comment on this. Um By the time I started working epidemiology at the university of minnesota I was already in my late 20s. It was the 90s But people were talking still about the 70s and how this laboratory of Physiological hygiene that was what it was called was in the basement of a rotting stadium at the university of minnesota The stadium was falling apart Which is ironic because it's like public health, right like the occupational health right there But anyway, so there's some old pictures of people in the stadium from the stadium days They finally like knocked down that stadium And so by the time I was working in public health at the university of minnesota We were in like an office building, you know a real office building But that just goes to show you like that was the beginning of that program in the early 80s Where it was becoming a school and they didn't even have any offices And this is like the history of a lot of programs like even like I was shocked at the university of south florida their program started in the 80s too and um, so If they're starting in the 80s, you know, that's a lot different than starting in the 1880s, right So let's think about it. They were starting these programs in the 80s They're starting epidemiology. They're starting biostatistics. I mean people could do it But you didn't have all these people trained in it and talking about it the way you had in engineering and psychology and everything Then when I came on the scene as a research secretary in epidemiology at the university of minnesota in the late 1990s We were undergoing the evidence-based medicine movement and that was the whole idea that A lot of the medicine being practiced was not based on evidence from research because hello We were just inventing the research method So there was this idea. We had to go back and do over we had to do a bunch of research about stuff That was already being prescribed like hormone replacement therapy for whi women's health initiative That was one of the things we had to do Evidence-based medicine on we had to do evidence-based medicine on a lot of our blood pressure lowering drugs and so that's so so We were shifting Our thoughts and medicine towards outcomes. We were even I didn't put it on the slide We were thinking about quality of life. Like how do you measure quality of life? We we were not saying Oh, we gave out all these drugs. We were saying. Oh, we healed these patients. We were moving towards outcomes But by 2003 The mph programs were not looking at program outcomes on the basis of quality Instead they were looking at program components So if you We're gonna say like in nursing. Let's say you have an accredited program nurses have to take this um test called the NCLEX and If the rate of passing that NCLEX goes below a certain level you lose your accreditation because it's obviously not a quality program So that's an example of outcomes but The cph was not interested in what is your rate of graduation? What is your rate of dropout? What it how how badly or how do students rate your program? Are they complaining? Are they miserable? You know, are people is their equity are people getting good training? They were not doing outcomes what they would do Is in your paperwork you had to prove you had certain components like especially if you remember hiv became a big problem in the 90s And so a lot of people wanted to study hiv. So they'd say, okay Well, do you have a professor who can teach hiv? They didn't ask is that professor good at teaching it? Does that professor Treat students equally and with respect You know, this that professor Are they intelligent themselves? Can they mentor? No, it was just do these Components are they there is a professor there is the lab there, right? and you will if you join all of these organizations, you know the apha and all that if you really get into public health and you watch the stuff You'll start seeing that they're trying to correct this bias now You know, I mean, maybe they've been trying for the last few years um, but it has been a big problem because I'll show you why Years of program component versus program outcome bias has made it so people the the c page wasn't really looking at outcomes and making sure people Coming out of these programs were satisfied and had what they needed and could go and get a job and you know, we're we're You know good public health Citizens they instead were saying okay programs if you want to train people you have to have all the stuff So this caused social injustice among the programs programs were rewarded for simply having more resources So this basically exacerbated like let's say that you were in a low resource area And you wanted to a public health program What if you couldn't hire an hiv person? What if you couldn't hire somebody who's you know, who's really good at teaching epidemiology? Then what you know, what what is your solution and You know their resistance to online training until like maybe 2015. I mean, it's pretty recent Um, like the c ph of saying oh, that's low quality or whatever It just exacerbated the social injustice among programs I mean if they had made it so you could have remote learning And it was high quality remote learning then it went to but it really exacerbated it It also promoted this thing which has always been a problem in public health Back to john snow and that's fiefdoms And I'll explain them on the next slide a little bit more But what a fiefdom is is where sort of a group of people Like faculty or maybe even their students with them they amass some power Like maybe they get a lab or something and then they draw that power away from the other programs and organization stuff and and and then they Through that people end up getting like in in the workplaces it plays out differently But in public health colleges or medical colleges it ends up with abusive students and faculty You know like abusive stakeholders, you know And so because the c ph was not really tracking the experience of people In the in the programs and ensuring that graduation rates were were high and that people were not getting abused or subject to racism Or or just simply like when I was at usf I don't have my phd Because I was a casualty of one of these programs I went and we paid money and whatever but it was awful. It was just truly awful. I left that program 2008 I don't know if it's any better. You know, I why should it get better? You know, um, but I remember when I was there I was I witnessed all this stuff I witnessed the fiefdoms. I witnessed Like at harvard. This is a big problem with uh in public health of fiefdoms You know drawing resources away from other things like in at the college of public health and the university of south florida You know aging is really important. There's an older population of florida. Well, the people who were studying aging they were just not getting any money or anything the people who were studying um things like drugs and biotech and stuff they were getting all the money, you know And so obviously, um, you know Promoting Having the ceph Say you need to have all these components your program and make it look really great and all that Just created fiefdoms. It didn't really they didn't say oh We need stuff about obesity because everybody's obese in the us You know what I mean? Like they didn't they didn't use leadership, which is what they're trying to teach, I guess, but Anyway, so as I described it this focus on program components It just allowed racism and sexism and public health and perpetuate There was a lack of protection for vulnerable students I could just go on and on what I saw personally at the university of south florida and um, What I now what is reported by my customers who are in these programs um, it's just awful And um and not every program like there's some programs Like I said the university of minnesota, you'll you know, it's big And you'll run into problems, right? You'll run into fiefdoms You're running to this but it's big enough so that you can find Yourself you'll find somebody you'll find somebody studying obesity. You'll find somebody studying abuse, you know and um, that's why I say like maybe looking for a big program is a good idea, but i'm not sure I know the university of minnesota is a big program that you could probably find a place and then um Remember this has been had been going on with the ceph since about You know since the 90s really Where they were doing this program component versus program outcome thing And ultimately our public health failed during cova 19 So everybody who was trained and working on this problem in the u.s. I maybe not everybody but most of them had an accredited mph And so the social injustice a historical lack of attention to important health issues like gun violence police brutality racism health care Like it screwed up our cova 19 response like so many people are not vaccinated in the u.s um so many people on guns in the u.s. Uh Police are killing people and not being held accountable all the time You know, it's still going on and it was all because Our whole pop cluster of public health Systems just took their eyes off the ball and now how do we study gun violence? How do we study racism? Like do we have any methods? you know um, I haven't read this book, but it's I wanted to highlight it because fiefdoms is a concept that came out of I think originally harvard business review, but people have written about it and I Like the apha if you follow the apha you'll you'll start to see some patterns in who is the leader of that and so I'm quoting from this book. It's a basic human tendency to want to control one's destiny or turf Or the the basic human tendency to want to control one's destiny or turf runs counter To discipline in an organization So think about that Like if you want to control let's say you have an office at work if you're busy controlling your office this runs counter to just discipline, you know, like Filling in your time card properly all this other things that are important So if the CEO or the manager of a unit lets people act on their own The company will soon fall into disarray. So if everybody's defending their own office and their cubicle and they're all worried about that Nobody's focused on the system and how the whole system runs and that is exactly Why uh, focus on program components sort of promoted In public health uh in public health education. So Um, but they're always saying they'll reform right and so let's see here They're always saying they'll reform Um, but the problem has been getting the apha To even admit some of these things occur like gun violence Like there was some legislation that the cdc couldn't say the word gun or something like that. I'm sure I got it wrong, but Um, so we we had gun violence We had this drug war that resulted in incarceration of people and the sigmatization Sigmatization of mental health and our opi crisis, you know, the apha just really would not Talk about these things and use And when I say the apha they have um A weekly publication called or I said weekly. I think it's monthly called the nation's health They also have this friday letter They send out and you know that they would say oh well those publications are not meant for that But like what are they meant for right? Um, you know all of these things I listed on the slide have been problems since the 2000s like I grew up in minnesota and the reason I don't live there anymore It's because of these problems on the slide are worse some of them are worse in minnesota and like racism It's really bad there and police killing people obviously george floyd like that's now international everybody knows it And that is why I mean the racism is the main reason I was said I I I I didn't know where I was going to go, but I knew I couldn't stay in boston or i'm sorry in minneapolis And have a career like if you look at the as much as I say good things about the school of public health at the university of missota They the same people who were running it back in 2003 are still running it They're all white a lot of them are men and and this is still going on so um So all this bad news I'm sorry to give it to you is the bottom line is that to get a public health job after you get an mph You want to get an mph from an accredited program either accredited by the ce ph here in the us um or accredited by whatever country accredits programs like like like in canada or the uk or Saudi Arabia or whatever right Okay, so that's to get hired like if If i'm at the government or i'm at big pharma and i'm trying to hire you and your mph comes from like not in the accredited college Um in whatever country it's in i'm probably not gonna hire okay but these programs That are accredited so many of them Have such low quality learning experiences associated with them that you don't really learn what you need to to know in order to do the the uh To do the job once you get it So that's what the problem ends up being so you might be able to Get into an mph program in the u.s. That's accredited and get through it But you won't learn what you need to know and then it becomes hard to get a job because you don't have talk to talk And you don't have experiences learning experience So Shopping becomes really important These programs change fast if a person is a leader and they're good and the program's good And then they change leadership into the program leaders bad the program becomes bad Okay So get recent first-hand accounts from graduates or people in the program Okay When i was at university south florida one day there was a person visiting who was thinking of being in our program And they put that person alone with some of us students and said just go talk to them And when they shut the door and we were alone we were like don't join this place is terrible It's awful. Okay, and I also have encouraged my customers to go do that and people have done that They've taken a visiting person sign. So don't I regret coming here. Okay So and and so if you're on linkedin you see somebody who's in a program You know, you just write them say hey, I'm really into public health But I'm worried about joining this program. Are you having good experience or not? I mean, can you be honest? And they usually will be honest. I mean there's ways of diplomatically saying this program's not that good You know, I wouldn't have chose. I shouldn't have chosen it or whatever um But in any case if you end up going to a program even if it's a crappy one like your school will Or your workplace will only send you to this crappy one or whatever You still can talk to people in the program and learn about specific professors or classes to go in and which to avoid, you know, because If the program is bad, it's because there's bad leadership Okay, and that's why the university of minnesota program is pretty good because there's always been this good leadership there Since I've been there, you know, studying um in working, you know, I don't I didn't work for the school of public health But I worked at the university of minnesota. Well, I guess I worked in the cardiovascular division of the Of something I don't I don't remember where exactly I worked But I was working in epidemiology was affiliated with the school, you know And I saw not where I was working was not good leadership But where that school has good leadership I mean, it's not the greatest leadership because obviously there's so the same problems there A lot of the same problems there that were there when I was there But it's still good enough that you can get a good experience and so um And and I emphasize do not be picky about what topic you study Like I remember people coming to the university of south florida to study hiv And they'd be there and the hiv person left. I mean who wouldn't leave that place? It was not a very good place at least at that time to be a faculty, you know And so these people were left there with a half done hiv project, right? So it's better, you know, if you if you're going to do your mph somewhere, you know, don't don't care about the topic I mean try to steer it like when I have my customers. I try to sort of steer it in the generally right direction But it's easier to just say hey a lot of these places are bad There's bad leadership and it's just a matter of pleasing somebody and getting some Form signed to actually get your degree. So that's how you should pick your topic All right. Now, let's say you've decided that you're going to apply for um, a us accredited school Well, what they did was they created the the aspph Remember the aspph is the club of all these accredited programs and the ceph is the only thing that's going to credit them, right? So all together They grouped together and they created this application platform called so fast which stands for something, right? And this is a lot like if you've ever submitted anything online like if you write journal articles or I'm trying to think of like what you might fill out and submit online like paperwork or like you're signing up for something um, that's what so fast is and so you create an account And you you have to create the last I checked you create a personal statement It you just send it's like you have one application and it goes to all the schools you designate You know, um, and you might think oh, that's convenient It's totally not convenient because you want to make a different personal statement for each of them You know, like if you're applying and one program's big on maternal child health and the other one's big on You know, cardiovascular disease you want to tailor it, but I don't think you can And I'm not sure you can tailor any letters to them or letters of recommendation So it's it's like every time that I help somebody with so fast I'm always making them log it and give me screenshots You know and trying to write stuff down and prepare all the stuff for them to submit um It's a big pain And you probably get in they're looking for your money You know, they're basically looking for your money And they want to make sure that whatever you did before your mph at least makes you able to do the courses When I first applied to get into an mph program was long before they created so fast And they didn't let me in because I was a fashion designer and I hadn't taken any math courses So I took a calculus course and then they let me in the next year. I I don't know what happens to other people I I haven't actually encountered anybody Besides myself who's applied to get into an mph program and been refused And that is a bad sign to me I think like they should be refused to people, but I think it's a money-making effort because if you go to so fast You know, I call it more public health grift. We really just didn't need this portal Okay Each school should have their own portal. We should be able to make a unique application to each school You know, I I don't like this because I You know, you should be able to showcase yourself differently to each school This portal has a one-star rating doesn't Surprised me because every time I use it it is awful to use and by the way just as a side note Those of you want who have an mph and want to get a certification a cph like I have That's run by the ceph too and that has its own portal Which is also it's gotten better over the years, but it's also crappy so um So this leads up to like what why do I know all this and what am I talking about? What do I do? Well what I Do is I help people wherever they are in their learning journey in public health now some of Some people are just into data science that I help they're not really into public health But if you're into public health or you're into data science and public health Even if you're a healthcare practitioner or whatever if you're trying to do this public health thing this public health education thing I can help you okay Because it is very hard to do it Um because of the way these systems are set up, you know, there's a lot of corruption and fraud and these um You know, I I can't say oh this person is a fraud or that person is corrupt It's the systems are set up for corruption like the people who are running the apha the ceph All of that stuff they all end up kind of being the same people And people like me who have businesses we tend to benefit like they they send their business to us not to me personally But that's so fast. Um Uh site. Why is it so bad? Well, probably somebody was friends with somebody, you know Um in that was involved and and so that so this sort of group think That has kept out a lot of people like me You know who follow my demographic basically and who are concerned about the issues I'm concerned about like the ones I showed you on the early slide we get shut out and so we don't get to um Manipulate these systems and try to get some of that So that's what I mean is the system becomes corrupt because it's biased and and I wouldn't like point to any individual Person and say they're corrupt I would just say the whole system is corrupt and people are not standing up and stopping it that I would point at those people People at the university of minnesota. These white people are still in charge. They're not standing up and stopping it They're not standing up and saying okay. It's time for some black woman who's been You know not given credit for her studies of You know incarcerated women or of Maternal mortality or whatever, you know what it's time for you guys to to run this place, you know So really I I'm just indicting the system Okay, and I'm indicting the people who just let it go just let it happen And they don't stand up and scream like I'm trying to do because I just will be kicked to the side But you get to benefit because I have a business now Like I can't work in these infrastructures because I'll just get vomited out But with my business you can hire me to help you right like you can as I mentioned You can hire me to help you with your mph application And don't you think I'm going to give you the inside scoop on all of these, you know programs I'm going to help you decide maybe you know, I'm I'm not like Perfectly predictive like I'm not a perfect like psychic, but I can pretty much You know give you with a high probability What programs are better than others and I'm evidence-based right? I can show you like why I think Some program might be crappy versus some other program or what program might be right for you Like at the end of the day Among good programs you might not fit in one because it's not right for you like you might not like Minnesota right So I help you if you come to me for this what's in the blue part of the slide your mph application I help you with all of that. Okay And I help you write your personal statement all that I and and like I said, you know I guess maybe it's a bias because of me But all my customers get into your mph program. So I I don't know who they reject so If you if anybody has gotten rejected from an mph application Please put in a comment anything about it because I'm you know, I'm sorry first of all and second of all I'd be curious as to why Then let's say you actually make it into an mph program And sometimes people deliberately go to a bad program because their workplace is paying or It's online. It's the only thing convenient and they know it's going to be low quality even though it's accredited Well, then that's my business. I make a lot of money off of you I try not to make too much off of you But what I I'll do is I'll sit down and we'll look usually what I do is each time when you have a course We decide do you need my help with it or not? You know If you're already a nurse and you have a course in cardiovascular disease You probably don't need my help But maybe you do because the skills you're taught in your mph have more to do with research than like Other things you may have done in medicine or in health care before So I just take it at a case by case basis. We just see what kind of help you need when I give you And I do everything over skype and what we do is we sort of create Like a drop box together and we share things and I teach how to use otaro the My citation program And and then you keep using it. Um, I think like if you're if you're one of my customers you're watching this Um, and you've had the benefit of working with me, you know Just put a comment and say like what you learned that's been helpful Like what you learned during your studies that still is helpful with your job because that's I I don't just Teach you your mph. I teach you the stuff that you're not learning in your mph because of all these issues I was surprised when I started my um My business in 2012 That after people got their mph or or whatever degree I was helping them get that they often contacted me after they got a job So they'd be like working at a public health department or working at big pharma or working, you know at a health education place or something and they'd be like, I don't know how to do my job And what I realized so what didn't they know how to do? I mean, they knew Biostatistics epidemiology and stuff But they didn't really didn't know how to apply these skills in a real-time environment They didn't know leadership. They didn't I have so much experience every time people come to me with a problem I already have a whole bunch of choices of what you can do about it So if you're so if you're listening to this and you're at any place in this journey Um, and you think I could help you, you know, just contact me on linkedin and I'll meet with you And give you like a free consultation We'll just see is there's something I can help you with or maybe not But in any case in my free consultation, I can probably give you some advice like about You know programs we can go look at stuff on the internet. And so um, so yeah, so I'm all about mphs I mean, I think it's really if you can get the the do the studies and get the skills I think This is some of the most valuable Skills I've learned in my life and I use them all the time and so it's worth it. But unfortunately the u.s. Makes it hard I think it does a lot of things. So um, actually, you know, I haven't seen if anybody is asking me Nope, nobody's um So again, uh, if you're joining or you join in the middle and you're trying to ask questions and you don't see any Um thing in the chat. It's because I don't know why my software is not working for that But I if you're on linkedin or even on youtube and ask questions, I should be able to come back and answer All right, so in conclusion How to join an mph program? Well First you really want to do a lot of shopping you want to choose the program you want And you also want to choose the timing like do you want to start next fall? If you want to start in fall 2022, you probably should be applying now Um, if you want to start and you usually can start in winter, you know, they're usually kind of flexible that way So just start thinking about those things and also, um, like if you want to go to the us or somewhere else And if you want to like I help people get their mphs other places, but I'm kind of an expert at the us, right? Because I'm from here um And so then the next step is you apply for through sofas if you're going applying to an uh, us college um, and that includes letters of recommendation transcripts personal statement And I can help you get all that crap together and it changes every year a little bit not a lot But I can help you with it And then um, let's say that you obtain you decide that you're going to apply or you get accepted And it's time to go get your mph. Um, no matter what kind of program you're in whether it's one that you really want It is really good or one that's like you're kind of iffy about you know Never never hesitate to contact me if you think I can help like a lot Even my customers will sometimes contact me like halfway through a class and be like monica I really wanted to avoid you for this class, but I I'm suffering I can't even like one of my long time customers who I just love She has her mph and she's getting uh Like a mental health nursing degree and she's in this evidence-based nursing class and Evidence-based nursing classes don't get me started. They're so goofy. They don't follow like Epidemiology and so she's really confused, you know, and she's like monica. I didn't want to contact you I'm like just contact me if you if you're worried just contact me. I don't know what I'll do Okay, I'll I'll what I'll do is meet with you and I'll look at where you are in the class and I'll look at the syllabus and I'll look at You know how your grade and what they're trying to teach you and see if I can help you, you know I'll be honest with you in my business in my last 10 years there have been times where Like there was one time in an accredited online program One of my customers learners, you know, got an assignment And we worked through the assignment and it was doing epidemiologic calculations like prevalence incidents and stuff Those are you know what i'm talking about? And she got all the answers wrong And so I was like I made you get the answers wrong to these epidemiologic calculations. That doesn't make sense Well, it turns out one of the other people in her school now remember this was online So they didn't really know each other But luckily she had had a group project an online group project with somebody and that person Googled the internet and found the exact same homework assignment with the answers in it You know that I guess this teacher had used And the answers were the answers I had guided her to do So she said to me monica you didn't get anything wrong. It's our teacher doesn't know doesn't understand how to do it, right? So this is a great example of what the problem is with these accredited colleges. It's here And and i've seen this with another one like that like another They had a guest lecturer who gave some assignment and my learner I I Formulated this complicated email explaining how the assignment to make sense You know like he was trying to get him to estimate a two-year rate Of something happening in a one-year study in a study that ends after a year So how do you get a two-year rate like that's the kind of stuff? I mean, yeah epidemiology is really confusing and my field is really confusing and it's really hard to teach and you know I I would you know in fact when I was going to the university of minnesota like my My friends from college will uh attest to this. I complained profusely about I was like You know, I remember we had a lesson in case control studies and I was so confused about the difference We did oh exposure odds ratio and then um and a disease odds ratio and I was just complaining about I don't I don't think people graduating today even know the difference between exposure and disease odds ratio from a lot of these programs I mean how I'll help people through their phd Like one of my one of my closest customers I met him after he graduated with his phd from emery university, which is supposed to be really good Like it's in Atlanta near the cdc He still Doesn't know incidents prevalence. You know all these calculations. I'm telling he still doesn't know The that vocabulary. I have to reteach it to him each time And I'll tell you if you go to the university of minnesota school public health They will drill that into you And I can guarantee it the same professors are still there. They will drill it into you. They will make you write it They will make you interpret your they will make you look at sass output and they will make you pick out estimates and write sentences and They don't hit you with a ruler, but it feels like you're kind of in school and there you're being schooled Hello, thank you. Thank you to university of minnesota school public health for schooling me And um, so I I'll tell you that's a good place And but I live in boston now We have several public health mph programs around You know, if you go to harvard, you will meet a lot of people But I wouldn't go to harvard because I don't think you get skills from that program. I never saw anybody leave that I see people leave the brand ice program without skills kind of like the emery program The only program I see people leave and they've got the skills is boston university So if you're going for skills and you're in the boston area, I would say mph at boston university And you will see my forever intern is doing exactly what I say. That's why she's my intern. She listens to me All right. Well, we didn't get any questions today. Let me make sure. Um, and it's probably because it's um I'll undo the channel really it's Memorial day weekend and I thought, you know, maybe no to show up whatever but that's okay Because uh, you can watch this later and learn about how to become Um a member of the mph program at one of these accredited colleges All right, and and also, uh, like I said, you know, contact me on linkedin or if you have my email And we'll we could always set up a free consultation and I can figure out how to help you if you're on a public health journey Somewhere along it if you're stuck or you stop to take a rest or whatever and you need a little advice Just contact me. I'll tune you out. All right. We'll have a good weekend. Have a good memorial day weekend and um, I'll talk to you next week