Public Health

Public Health is big. It’s global. It’s local. It’s access to healthcare and education. It’s vaccines and healthy food.   It’s cleaning up pollution. It’s justice. It’s human rights. It’s changing the world to prevent diseases from ever occurring. 

The Public Health major and minor extend across the arts, humanities, STEM, and social sciences to provide students varying perspectives about health-related issues. Although our core courses cover many of the pillars of public health (e.g., epidemiology, social/behavioral sciences, research methods), our curriculum is designed to go beyond the traditional “lifestyle focus” of health promotion. Our courses consider the contributions of social and cultural contexts; historical and personal traumas; structural inequalities; the intersections of race, socioeconomic status; and other social determinants of health as the key drivers of health outcomes and disparities. We provide students with an interdisciplinary liberal arts education experience that values diversity and inclusion, community engagement, and social justice while guiding students to understand the historical and social roots of health inequities.

At St. Lawrence, you don’t just learn about public health in a classroom, you will engage in public health in the real world. All public health majors complete an experiential learning component (ELC). From tracking Lyme disease in New England to researching maternal health in rural India, our students get to work on real public health issues.

Once you leave St. Lawrence, you can put your public health skills to work in a fast-growing and important field. This major prepares students for professional careers and graduate studies in public health by providing a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and aspirations of public health.