On June 3rd, I participated in the Department of Public Health’s DE Graduate Certificate brainstorm session focused on Public Health Foundations and Practice – Training and Discussion at East Carolina University. I was asked to discuss the Ethnic and Rural Health Disparities (ERHD) program and how it became so successful of a DE program in just a short period of time.
The all morning session featured other successful programs along with sessions on training faculty with technical tools for teaching DE courses such as mediasite and blackboard. The entire training session for the Department of Public Health was organized by Dr. Greg Kearney since he will be the official Director of the DE Graduate Certificate in Public Health at ECU.
In my talk to the audience as Director of the ERHD Program, I highlighted several key points which has helped the ERHD success. They were: 1. Marketing the ERHD Program, 2. Setting High Standards for the ERHD Program, 3. Finding our particular niche within public health, 4. Setting short-term and long-term goals, 5. Receiving funding support, and 6. Receiving Student feedback to make improvements to the ERHD program.
I received very good response and questions from the audience and hope that I expressed the importance of our ERHD program to the public health field. In fact, the ERHD program is STILL the one and only ONLINE accredited, university program focused on ethnic and rural health disparities! That makes me, our faculty, and hopefully all our current and past ERHD graduates proud (#proudERHDgraduate).