Institutional Training Programs (T32s)

Johns Hopkins University (predoctoral), Baltimore

Bloomberg School of Public Health

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Contact

Jonathan P. Weiner, Dr.P.H.
Program Director
Department of Health Policy and Management
The Johns Bloomberg School of Public Health
624 North Broadway, Room 605 Hampton House
Baltimore, MD 21205

Web site: http://www.jhsph.edu/HPM

Content Areas & Program Description

The pre-doctoral training program at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy & Management trains students as interdisciplinary Ph.D. health services researchers within several broad areas of considerable priority to our nation's health care delivery system:

1. Reducing Health Care Disparities for Vulnerable Populations: This area will focus on racial and ethnic minorities (with a particular focus on African Americans), and populations disadvantaged by lack of access to health services (low income persons, uninsured children, residents of underserved areas) and vulnerable groups with complex care needs that often lead to poor care coordination and lower quality of care (e.g., those with mental illness, people with disabilities, and elderly with multiple chronic conditions).
2. Improving Organization and Payment of Health Care Services: This area will focus on research that seeks to expand our understanding of the impact of organizational structure, provider payment, insurance coverage and design, and clinical and fiscal management on the efficiency, equity and quality of care.
3. Ensuring Patient Safety and Quality Health Care: This area will focus on the multi-dimensional factors associated with the attainment of patient safety and quality in diverse delivery settings. We will address clinical, management and patient perspectives. We will encompass a range of research areas including medical errors and the safety culture, development of management systems for quality improvement, and the development of sophisticated metrics for quality and safety assessment.

Students are generally required to enroll in the Health Services Research and Policy (HSR&P) Ph.D. track within the Department of Health Policy and Management (HPM) of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The three areas of pre-doctoral training outlined above build from a common core of course work that emphasize statistical, measurement, and evaluation design methodologies that are applied using conceptual frameworks from health services research. All students also are required to take core courses applicable to health care policy. Our goal is to educate students broadly and to offer them considerable latitude in selecting dissertation topics within the above areas of focus.

Our strength is a faculty that brings an unusual depth and breadth of expertise and active research programs in which trainees can participate and learn. The core training faculty have academic appointments in the Department of HPM. The core faculty is supplemented by a large number of resource faculty from elsewhere in the School of Public Health and also from the Johns Hopkins Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Business, Arts & Sciences and Engineering.

Generally, students take 1.5-2 years of course work. Students usually enter the program possessing a Master's-level degree. They are expected to initiate their doctoral dissertation research upon completion after the second year. Students are generally supported for a 2-year period on the grant and then are assisted in seeking funding on their own. Most students are also assisted in finding part-time research positions at the Johns Hopkins University or at the numerous public and private health services research and policy organizations in the Baltimore/Washington area.

U.S. citizens and permanent residents interested in the Johns Hopkins pre-doctoral NRSA program should apply to the "Health Services Research and Policy" Ph.D. program in the Department of HPM. A link to the online admissions process is available at http://www.jhsph.edu/HPM. On the application form prospective students should indicate that they wish to be considered for the "AHRQ NRSA" training program. No other special application process is required. The application deadline is December 1st of each year for the class entering in the Fall of the following year.

Current as of August 2008

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Internet Citation:

Institutional Training Programs (T32s): Johns Hopkins University (predoctoral). Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/fund/training/T32-11.htm

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