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.
Yu-Hsiu Lin, a 2015 graduate of the Arnold School’s Ph.D. in Health Services Policy and Management program, has received the Young Scholar Fellowship from the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology’s Einstein Program.
The Graduate School at the University of South Carolina has featured December graduate (Ph.D. in Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior) and Graduate Civic Scholars alum Eboni Haynes for her work engaging teens in land use planning.
UofSC's Craig Brandhorst sits down with Nabil Natafgi, a new assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy Services and Management, to learn more about his interests healthcare quality, patient safety, telehealth, and rural care access.
Lexington Medical Center is a place of new beginnings for Danielle Thomas. The December graduate (Master of Public Health in Health Services Policy and Management) was born there in the 90s, and now she's returned for her career.
A recently published study by researchers at the Rural and Minority Health Research Center found that rural populations have to travel further to reach cancer specialists, including medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, cancer surgeons and gynecological oncologists.
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.