The Health Policy and Management PhD program consists of 90 credit hours and can be completed on a full-time or part-time basis. Students must complete the PhD courses within seven years of matriculation into the program.
After finishing their coursework, students have up to seven additional years to complete their dissertation. However, students must complete their coursework and dissertation within a 10-year period.
Take all three courses.
Take all four courses.
Required courses (15 credits)
Take all five courses.
and
Elective courses (9 credits)
Choose three courses.
Students must complete a PhD minor. The minor must contain at least four graduate courses (12 credit hours) and comply with the requirements of the minor department/unit. Students wishing to complete a minor outside of the following should consult with the program director for guidance: epidemiology, biostatistics, social and behavioral sciences, health informatics, sociology, policy analysis.
Public health foundations (9 credits)
Take all three courses.
Health Policy and Management foundations (12 credits)
Take both of the following courses.
and
One of the following courses.
and
One of the following courses.
PhD Seminars (13 credits)
Methods and skills courses (24 credits)
Required courses (15 credits)
Choose five courses.
and
Electives (9 credits)
Take all three courses.
Minor area (12 credits)
Dissertation research (20 credits)
Public health coursework
Health Policy and Management PhD students without a graduate degree, certificate or coursework in public health will be required to complete online introductory modules on environmental health and social and behavioral sciences to ensure they have basic competencies in all five core public health areas. This is a requirement of the Council on Education in Public Health (CEPH), the Fairbanks school’s accrediting body.
PhD advisory committee
The department of health policy and management will assign the student to an advisory committee after completion of the first year in the PhD program. The advisory committee will include at least two health policy and management faculty; one member may be from another discipline.
The advisory committee will approve the student’s program of study and counsel the student until he or she passes the qualifying examination. The chair of the PhD advisory committee will be a full-time faculty in the department of health policy and management. Faculty who meet the IU Indianapolis Graduate School guidelines will be eligible to serve as dissertation advisors.
Minor area
The student will select at least one minor from outside the department of health policy and management. The PhD minor typically includes four graduate-level courses, complies with requirements of the respective minor department or program, and must be approved by the student’s advisory committee.
Examples of minors include: bioethics, international research ethics, biostatistics, epidemiology, health economics, medical sociology, medical anthropology, nursing administration, business administration, and bioinformatics.
Qualifying examinations
The written qualifying examination is designed to assess the student’s attainment of the stated health policy and management PhD competencies and is taken after the coursework for the PhD has been completed. Students who fail the qualifying examination are normally allowed to retake it once.
Students who have passed the qualifying examination must enroll each semester (excluding summer sessions) for dissertation credits. Once students have accumulated 90 credit hours in completed coursework and dissertation credits, they may maintain continuous enrollment by enrolling in G901 for six credit hours at a cost of $150. Students can enroll in G901 for no more than six semesters.
The department of health policy and management will monitor the students’ progress toward the PhD degree and will make recommendations to the University Graduate School regarding the nomination to candidacy, the appointment of a research committee, the defense of the dissertation, and the conferring of the PhD degree.
Dissertation
The dissertation will be written on an original topic of research and presented as one of the final requirements for the health policy and management PhD degree. The student’s dissertation research committee will be comprised of members of the graduate faculty.
The chair of the dissertation research committee must be a regular faculty member in the department of health policy and management, and a full member of the graduate faculty.
The student will submit to the IU Indianapolis Graduate Office, acting for the University Graduate School, a two-page prospectus of the dissertation research and the membership of the research committee at least six months before the defense of the dissertation.
After the committee has reviewed the dissertation, the decision to schedule the defense will be made. The student will then present and defend the dissertation orally in a public forum before the committee. Following the dissertation defense, all deficiencies must be adequately addressed to obtain approval by the dissertation research committee.
