Office of Public Health Practice & Community Engagement
2022-2023 Year in Review
Year 1 by the numbers
Dean hours
500*
1,000*
GA hours
1,400
intern hours
5
community partnerships formed or renewed
practice opportunities shared
75+
peer programs assessed
261
15+
hours of strategic listening
~$4,000
in scholarship support
*these hours do not include the hours dedicated to the Office by our Co-Deans and Graduate Assistant that are above and beyond the amount of hours allotted by their official positions in this Office
About the Office
In Summer 2022, the Office of Public Health Practice and Community Engagement (O-PHPCE) was established with a commitment to create and grow sustainable partnerships that engage communities as outlined in our SPH 2018-2023 Strategic Plan. A dedicated steering committee of UMD faculty, staff and students gathered valuable input from school and community members and proposed what Public Health Practice and Community Engagement could look like at the UMD School of Public Health. The creation of the office was a critical centerpiece recommendation. The formation of the Office was made possible by a $1.5 million gift from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The O-PHPCE is headquartered in the Office of the Dean at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. The Office is designed to support bilateral pathways between and among students, staff, faculty, and the community to enable public health practice opportunities that enhance academics, research, practice, and community well-being; promote public health practice transformations; and serve as a resource and innovation hub for the school and community partners domestically and globally.
What we do
Evaluate Processes & Provide Feedback
Facilitation of Quality Improvement
Create Guidance Documents & Resources
Consult
Catalyze
Convene & Connect
Vision and Mission
Vision
Our vision is a school where faculty, staff, and students routinely and intentionally collaborate with a wide range of community partners to integrate public health practice in education, research, and service and promote evidence-based, equitable solutions toward the improvement of health and well-being -- locally, nationally, and globally.
Mission
Our mission is to create sustainable and synergistic pathways to practice, model, and evaluate community-engaged research, service, and education.
We carry out this mission while maintaining our commitment to true participatory practices and power sharing, a dedication to integration with existing efforts for public health practice and community engagement, and a yearning to be a source for convening and shared learning.
Values
O
P
Organization
Participation
H
Humility
P
Passion
C
Connection
E
Equitable
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Our Year 1 Team
Sylvette La-Touche Howard
Dean of Community Engagement
MegAnn Smith
Graduate Assistant
Tracy
Zeeger
Dean of Public Health Practice
Fall Undergraduate Interns
Chinaemelum
Anadu
Darah
Davidson
Elyssa
Cheung
Josie
Fay
Itunu
Jagun
Spring Undergraduate Interns
Paige Brown
Mina Tzoukermann
Nasreen Bhumgara
Terrapin Think Tank Student Group
Jerry
Yang
Isha
Yardi
Esohe
Owie
Daniel
Chun Wing Fong
Happiness & Wellness Initiative Undergraduate Interns
Daniella Hanau
Corinne Yelsits
Olivia Horowitz
Laying the Foundation
Strategic Listening
Throughout our first year, we were able to gather feedback and information from students, faculty, and staff to inform the efforts of our Office and ensure we were aligned with the wants and needs of our SPH community.
Hosted 1-hour listening sessions with each Department's Internship Coordinator(s)
Issued a Google survey to all SPH Student Groups
Attended SPH student group meetings to share about the Office
Hosted 2, 1-hour listening sessions with SPH Labs
Met individually with 3 SPH Centers
Peer Institution Scan
The goal of the peer institution scan was to survey Council on Education for Public Health accredited schools of public health across the United States for a dedicated Office of Public Health Practice & Community Engagement (O-PHPCE). We are highly unique in having an Office of Public Health Practice & Community Engagement!
Hosted 2 SPH student group leaders meetings
Incorporated feedback from Steering Committee survey results in strategic plan
Met with multiple University-wide groups about aligning efforts
and so much more...
Curriculum Review
25 SCHOOLS
have an Office of Public Health Practice.
6 SCHOOLS
across the US, including MPH and Baccalaureate programs, have an Office of Public Health Practice and Community Engagement.
UMD is the only Big 10 school with an O-PHPCE. However, four of the Big 10 schools have an Office of Public Health Practice, and three of the Big 10 schools have an Office of Community Engagement.
77 SCHOOLS
have an Office of Community Engagement.
It's easy to take the simplest things for granted. Underwear isn't the first thing that comes to mind when it comes to donations, and there's a great need for them.
26 Schools
have similar invitations to public health practice opportunities such as a practicum or applied practice experience. 13 schools have similar initiatives to an office of community engagement such as community outreach or community service.
9 SCHOOLS
in the top 25 Schools of Public Health have an Office of Public Health Practice or an Office of Community Engagement.
9 schoolS
of the U.S. News 2023 top 25 SPH have an Office of PHP and/or CE.
#11: Yale University
#12: George Washington University
#15: University of Pittsburgh*
#17: Brown University
#17: University of Iowa*
#22: Drexel University*
*HRSA Regional PH Training
Center affiliation
Part of our Office's strategic review of existing efforts was the initiation of a comprehensive curriculum review to assess public health practice and community engagement being taught and promoted in the classroom. Interns reviewed nearly 100 courses across the School of Public Health and identified where PHP&CE occurred in the classroom. This review is ongoing, however, of the courses reviewed thus far, nearly 85% have PHP&CE in either assignments or module themes.
Examples include:
Course: | Assignment: | Module Theme: |
HLTH 140: Personal & Community Health | Service-Learning Project: Comfort Cases (105 points): Thousands of children enter the foster care system each year. Most carry little more than the clothes on their backs, Comfort Cases' mission is to provide the essentials to these brave children on their journey to find home. | Assess and communicate individual and community-level needs for health promotion and disease prevention. |
HLTH 292: Community Health Engagement | Scholarship in Practice projects, partnering with a local agency to assist them with identified community health issues. | Understand and apply the following concepts and strategies: community organizing and community building. |
HLTH 302: Methods of Community Health Assessment | Out of “classroom” Experiential Learning* | Collaborate with community organizations to apply public health principles in a real-world setting. |
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Student Support
Scholarships
In the Spring 2023 semester, the Office awarded our inaugural student awards to three outstanding undergraduate students and two outstanding graduate students. We have launched our call for applications for Summer recipients and plan to continue awarding students to support their public health practice and community engagement experiences each semester.
Student Highlights
The Office also featured our first Student of the Month to highlight excellent work being done in the field by our current students. We plan to continue to collect nominations and feature students each month on social media.
*This post also got great engagement on the SPH Instagram
Practice Opportunities
In the Spring 2023 semester, the Office collected and disseminated over 75 different public health practice opportunities. Opportunities are sent to students via a weekly newsletter and posted on SPH social media. We are also in the process of creating a central webpage on the SPH website for practice opportunities.
Events
SPH Student Groups
The Office also collected events that were not posted to the SPH events page to share over social media and the SPH weekly newsletter.
The Office is interested in supporting existing student groups in the School of Public Health because they are doing extremely important and valuable public health practice & community engagement work. We issued a survey to collect information about the efforts happening in each of the student groups and visited their meetings to share more about the Office and hear about their work.
In the Spring semester, we started connecting with the leaders of the student groups to begin to form a learning collaborative among the SPH student group leaders. In this initial meeting, the student group leaders brainstormed the following action items:
Create a GroupMe for student group leaders
SPH wide volunteering
Connect with SPH in the DC metro area
SPH wide events for anyone
Lecture series
Mentor/mentee for undergrad and grad
Faculty meet & greets for practice opportunities each semester
Make students in SPH feel like a family “We are SPH”
More opportunities for connections between students
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Terrapin Think Tank
The Office partnered with the Terrapin Think Tank, UMD's first student-led policy incubator this year. TTT is our Office's first affiliated student group and is an important policy in practice arm of our work. The TTT aims to improve the health of our local community through policy advocacy and research, and provides a platform for students to meaningfully engage with the needs of their local community.
In addition to two co-directors and two associate directors, the TTT onboarded six student fellows from different majors across campus. The Fellows assist with writing, research, and meeting with community members for TTT’s policy projects. Additionally, the Fellows took a 1-credit Student Initiated Course (STIC) in Spring 2023 to learn the basics of local policy advocacy and community-centered policy design taught by the TTT's co-directors.
Staffing CHW in non-traditional settings
Current Projects
Developing affordable transportation infrastructure for FQHC patients in Prince George’s County.
Researching ways the PGCHD can leverage social media to improve health information dissemination.
Developing a curriculum for Prince George's County residents to learn about the principles of health equity.
Learn more at: sph.umd.edu/phpce
Community Engagement
Dr. Zeeger & Mina talk to a community partner at the G.O.A.T. Expo
Team lunch after volunteering at Good Neighbor Day
The Office participated in or hosted three incredible events that furthered our connections with the broader community. In the Fall Semester, our team participated in Good Neighbor Day and contributed to projects across the county removing invasive plants, assisting the elderly, and preparing school grounds for students. In the Spring Semester, our team had the opportunity to participate in the 2nd Annual G.O.A.T. Mental Health Expo and connected with 50 other vendors and 800 community members.
Dr. Zeeger, Dr. La Touche-Howard, & MegAnn at the G.O.A.T. Expo
Our Office also hosted the community at SPH by bringing 5 outstanding SPH Alumni back to campus for a National Public Health Week SPH Alumni Panel.
The esteemed alumni with O-PHPCE Assistant Deans, GA, and Dean Lushniak
Watch the panel recording here!
Student & alumni networking after the SPH Alumni Panel
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Budding Partnerships
The Town of Berwyn Heights
The Office has been hard at work developing partnerships with our neighboring communities this first year. We've been asked to partner with the Town of Berwyn Heights on a community-driven community assessment. Recruitment for residents to join a project-specific community advisory team is occurring in the summer of 2023.
The O-PHPCE project proposal to the Town of Berwyn Heights addresses three community-identified goals:
Promoting a culture of volunteerism in the community
Identifying & creating a sense of community among residents
Identifying best practices for preventing future flooding in the town
Anne Arundel County
We've also been making inroads in Anne Arundel County around the Crownsville Hospital Transformation. We've connected with the County Manager's Office and a community-based organization, EnBloom, that has a vision for transforming the hospital into a space of healing and community building.
Check out an interview with our partner at EnBloom here.
Crownsville Hospital
Calvert County
In our first year, the Office built upon Dr. Zeeger's existing relationship with the Calvert County Public School system to assist in lesson planning for the county's new Health 2 curriculum. Interns met with the curriculum lead for the county and assisted in developing lesson plans for three modules. Continued efforts by our Office's interns are underway to finish the rest of the modules by the start of the 2023-2024 academic year.
In addition, interns and the Terrapin Think Tank assisted the county in developing materials to educate the community about the importance of this new curriculum, particularly the portions of the curriculum that involve comprehensive sexual health education and gender identity.
enBloom's vision for the Crownsville Hospital Transformation
All the students found it so rewarding to be able to meet the community's needs and create a product that will be highly utilized based on what they learned in the classroom.
Prince George's County
Finally, the Office expanded our partnership with the Prince George's County Health Department through existing connections of Dr. La Touche-Howard to support in three key areas: youth mental health, workforce development and health equity.
Step Forward Systems of Care
The O-PHPCE conducted a website audit & provided consultation for youth-centered social media content, such as:
Classroom experience
Community needs
Usable product
Public Servant Pipeline
The O-PHPCE is working to formalize a mutually beneficial workforce pipeline. This summer the Office will be sponsoring 1 full-time intern to work with the PGCHD with the grand vision of:
Health Equity Champions
The Terrapin Think Tank partnered with Prince George’s County Healthcare Action Coalition Health Equity Workgroup to assist in developing lesson plans for their Health Equity Champions Curriculum.
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Get in Touch
Email us: sph-phpce@umd.edu
Visit our website: sph.umd.edu/phpce
Follow the School of Public Health on social media:
