Courses And Program Objectives

Program Objectives

  • Apply multidisciplinary approaches and tools to address health determinants, disparities, and injustices. 
  • Understand, evaluate, and deploy social justice theories, practices, and policies that shift systems of inequities in communities and develop strategies to disrupt oppressive systems and injustice.  
  • Engage in reflective praxis grounded in an equity and intersectionality lens to recognize how issues of equity, diversity, anti-bias inclusion must be embedded explicitly and implicitly in community health interventions and participatory research. 
  • Develop leadership skills that value and lift all voices in communities, particularly those of historically and currently marginalized groups. 
  • Identify processes needed to improve health outcomes and systems through planning, implementation, and evaluation of health programs for individuals and communities using a social justice framework. 

Curriculum

Core Coursework And Capstone: 50 Credits

  • Social Justice and Ethics
  • History, Frameworks, and Foundations of Community Health 
  • Critical Approaches to Health Communication and Promotion
  • Health Policy, Systems, and Advocacy
  • Inclusive Healthcare Leadership and Management 
  • Social Epidemiology 
  • Research Theory, Methods, and Practice
  • Program Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation 
  • Capstone Experience I and II
Core course descriptions

Elective Coursework: 10 credits

Students have access to a wide selection of elective options in pursuit of a concentration area. Options are any School of Nursing and Health Studies 400-500 level BHLTH course except for BHLTH 435, 436, 437, 438, 439, 496, University of Washington 400-500 level courses (across the three campuses), up to 6 graduate transfer credits, and up to 10 credits of independent study.

Updated July 2026