Beginning with this year's junior class, the community health major at Tufts has started to see an increase in popularity, according to community health program Director Edith Balbach.
"The junior class is on track to be the biggest ever," Balbach said.
Roughly five percent of the class of 2006, or about 68 students, have declared themselves community health majors. This compares to the 43 community health majors in the current senior class - the Class of 2005 - and a historic average of around 40 to 45 participants in past years of the program, Community Health Program Administrator Pamela Reider said.
The increase in the number of participants in the program may be attributed to the fact that the program was recently made a major in May 2003. Originally, it was a just a certificate program that required seven classes and an internship. The new major requires nine classes plus an
internship.
"More students are attracted to a major than a certificate," Balbach said.
Reider said she also attributed the
success of the program to its size and student-faculty ratio. "We're a relatively small program and students get a lot of individual attention ... they find that very helpful," she said. "[Community Health classes in general] are very popular among students."
The creation of the major had been in discussion for a long time, Reider said, as many students over the years had expressed interest in a community health major rather than just a certificate. The creation of the major "gave the degree more focus and credibility," she said.
The current junior class was the first to have the major available from the start of their freshman year, allowing those students a longer time to plan their major, and the outlook for community health majors in the Class of 2007 is also promising, Reider said.
"[We] are still in the process of establishing the sophomore class, but the numbers are significant," Reider said.
The community health program is a second major, which means that students must major in another subject in addition to community health. Reider said that this characteristic of the community health major emphasizes the fact that it is a multi-disciplinary program, distinguishing it from traditional health-related fields.
Sophomore Amanda Mendel, a community health and child development double major, said she was attracted to the community health major because she "has always been interested in the medical field," but did not want to get a degree solely in science.
Mendel said the community health Program allows her to pursue her interest in medicine while stimultaneously studying a variety of other things. Very often, Mendel said, community health "digs to the root of the problem," and focuses more on preventing health problems rather than solely treating them.
Instead, Mendel said she plans to use her two majors so she can study health problems from the perspective of someone in the field of child development, with a particular focus on media representation of the body and how this representation affects children.
Junior Valerie Hattis had no background knowledge of community health coming into Tufts, but said she became interested after taking the introductory community health class. She said this is how most freshman discover the program.
Mendel also said she was impressed with the community health program's introductory courses and professors. She said that Balbach and Professor Gary McKissick, who teach community health 1 and 2 respectively, were "extremely accessible" and brought real interest and enthusiasm to the class.
An internship and an associated seminar class currently form the core of the community health major, and through the nine classes students need to officially declare themselves community health majors, these students work toward completion of their seminar and internship.
The internship and seminar are the components of the major that students continually mention as one of the strengths of the program, Reider said. "[The seminar and internship] can be taken from a number of different perspectives, [helping students] pull together lots of the pieces of the puzzle," she said.
Balbach said that "virtually all" of the students in the community health program end up moving into health-related fields of some kind, ranging from graduate education in medicine, public health, or nursing to pursuing a political career in government health policy or through public health advocacy organizations.
