Health Services Policy and Management (HSPM) is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the promotion of personal and public health through planning, organizing, directing, controlling, coordinating and evaluating health services.
Career opportunities exist in hospitals and clinics, state and federal health care agencies, physician practices, long-term care facilities, professional organizations, consulting firms, insurance companies, health departments, and hospital and medical associations. Individuals from a wide range of undergraduate majors can expect to succeed in health administration, given the many career opportunities the field offers.
The MPH program emphasizes the management of public health agencies and public sector health services. Graduates from the MHA program find jobs in finance and business development, operations management, information technology management, human resources, patient and community relations and other fields. The Ph.D. prepares students to conduct health services research and/or teach at a university level.
We offer seven advanced degrees related to health services policy and management. Each graduate degree has specific application deadlines and requirements.
Four years in, the South Carolina SmartState Center for Healthcare Quality continues to raise the bar on its various training efforts for students, particularly its postdoctoral fellows program. Since 2015, eight postdoctoral fellows have become faculty members at academic institutions in South Carolina and beyond.
Originally interested in practicing medicine, Nabil Natafgi first learned about public health through an introductory course offered at the American University of Beirut in his native Lebanon. The class opened his eyes to the plethora of opportunities for improving the health of others.
Assistant professor Chen Liang is using informatics to save lives. His focus on leveraging this branch of information science to improve public health, medicine and clinical research dates back 15 years.
David Boucher, a 1982 graduate of the Department of Health Services Policy and Management’s Master of Public Health program, has been selected to serve as the Chief Business Transformation Officer for Bumrungrad International Hospital.
Recent research led by Matthew Hudson, the director of Cancer Care Delivery Research at Prisma Health-Upstate and a HSPM adjunct associate professor, investigates clinical work intensity (i.e., mental workload) that medical oncologists and oncologic nurse practitioners experience while providing care to cancer patients.
Kimberly Nelson has been recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with a CDC Childhood Immunization Champion Award. This honor recognizes individuals from across the country who demonstrate exemplary efforts to promote childhood immunizations in their communities.