Preventive Medicine and Public Health at UCSF

PREVENTIVE MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH AT UCSF

Preventive medicine is the medical specialty that deals with public health. Formal training in public health for physicians can include a residency in general preventive medicine and public health (see certification note), academic training in pubic health through schools of public health or fellowships through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, such as the Epidemic Intelligence Service. The focus for education in preventive medicine and public health at UCSF is in the Division of Preventive Medicine and Public Health of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

UCSF offers both a joint M.D.-M.P.H. program with the School of Public Health at Berkeley and residency programs in General Preventive Medicine and Public Health and Occupational Medicine.

Also of interest are opportunities for students in global health and international public health.

Medical Student Training in Preventive Medicine and Public Health

All students receive basic instruction in public and global health during the Infection, Inflammation and Immunity (I³) course in the second year and in epidemiology and evidence-based medicine throughout the first and second years. For students interested in studying preventive medicine and public health in depth during medical school, there are three options:

Obtain a master's degree in public health (M.P.H.) between the third and fourth years. There is a formal well-attended joint program with the School of Public Health at Berkeley for UCSF medical students, but students have also gone to other schools of public health and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for its M.Sc. and M.P.H. programs. There are three other schools of public health in California — Loma Linda University, San Diego State University and UCLA. Stanford also provides one-year masters of science programs in epidemiology and in health services research. See a list of accredited U.S. and Mexican schools of public health.
Do a fourth-year course clerkships in preventive medicine and public health offered through the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Students need not have obtained an M.P.H. to take these. There are three one-month or longer clerkships:
- EPI 140.07. Senior Clerkship in Preventive Medicine and Public Health. This course number is used for rotations in public health agencies within Northern California, such as, the Alameda County Public Health Department, the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the San Mateo County Health Services Agency, the California Department of Public Health and others. Activities include disease control, surveillance, outbreak investigations and public policy development. Opportunities exist within the broad areas of communicable disease control, environmental health, maternal-child health, chronic disease and injury control and general public health.
- EPI 140.02. Off-Campus Clerkship in Preventive Medicine and Public Health. This course number is used for rotations outside of Northern California. Course content is the same as EPI 140.07. Students may also participate in rotations in epidemiology for senior medical and veterinary students at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which needs to be scheduled as EPI 140.02.
- EPI 140.08. Clerkship in Human and Veterinary Disease Ecology. This is a full-time clerkship spent primarily in Sacramento with the California Department of Public Health's Vector-Borne Disease Section and Veterinary Public Health Section. Activities focus largely on field investigation of zoonotic disease outbreaks. The rotation is conducted in collaboration with the School of Veterinary Medicine on the Davis campus. Students must show proof of current pre-exposure rabies vaccination, which takes about 28 days to complete, so advanced planning is required.
Spend a year between third and fourth years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. This program, the CDC Experience: Applied Epidemiology Fellowship provides medical students with an applied hands-on training experience in epidemiology and public health. Eight competitively selected medical students from around the country who are completing their second or third year of medical school spend up to one full year at CDC. While at CDC, with the guidance of experienced CDC epidemiologists, they carry out epidemiologic analyses in areas such as birth defects, injury, chronic disease, infectious disease, environmental health, reproductive health and minority health. Training and work assignments provide opportunities to perform epidemiologic analyses and research, design public health interventions, assist in public health field experiences and report on findings through written and oral scientific presentations.

Students interested in concentrating in preventive medicine and public health should contact the career advisor, Dr. George Rutherford, at grutherford@psg.ucsf.edu or (415) 597-9108.

Development of these opportunities has been supported by:
The Haile T. Debas Academy of Medical Educators

For More Information

Slide sets on public health:

"Introduction to Public Health" slide set from Infection, Inflammation and Immunity (2008) (available through iROCKET)
American College of Preventive Medicine Medical Student Section

Useful links:

Certification Note: The American Board of Preventive Medicine provides specialty board certification in general preventive medicine and public health, occupational medicine and aerospace medicine and subspecialty certification in undersea and hyperbaric medicine and toxicology. While all of these specialties and subspecialties have common requirements that deal with population-based health care, public health is the primary focus of programs in general preventive medicine and public health.

Division of Preventive Medicine & Public Health