Abstract:

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have for more than a century and a half been serving as the primary beacon of knowledge and sole resource to address health inequities and disparities in African American communities. More importantly, HBCU’s have been responsible training and producing African American public health professionals since their inception. However, among the 107 HBCU’s, 12 institutions offer the Master of Science in Public Health (M.S.P.H.) or the Master of Public Health (M.P.H.) degree program. As in all areas of the health sciences industry, the percentage of African American professionals in the American public health workforce is woefully inadequate. Unfortunately, without a larger presence of African American healthcare professionals especially professional public health practitioners, reduction of or elimination of health disparities among underserved African American communities will likely not occur. Consequently, far more investment of resources to expand professional graduate degree programs in public health at HBCUs must be pursued to increase their output of graduates. In order to investigate probabilities for the potential expansion of graduate level public health degree programs at HBCUs, longitudinal data regarding output of graduates from existing HBCU public health graduate degree programs were analyzed. This study was limited to HBCUs public health graduate degree programs because of the plethora of documentation that recognizes that HBCUs have and continue to serve as invaluable resources for educating underrepresented groups for the professional healthcare workforce. Three research questions were developed for this study. A correlational research design, secondary samples of data were generated, and three null hypotheses were tested. Major findings indicated that the output of graduates from existing professional public health graduate degree programs at HBCUs should be increased. In order to have a more significant impact on the reduction of or elimination of health disparities among African American communities, the percentage of African American professionals in American public health workforce must be significantly expanded.

Keywords:

Higher education, public heath, HBCU, health disparities, social determinants of health.