School of Public Health highlights Joint Doctoral Program with UCSD
Since 1990, San Diego State University’s School of Public Health has partnered with the University of California, San Diego to offer a Public Health Joint Doctoral Program (JDP), a Ph.D. program that brings together the expertise and strengths of both public universities.
The Public Health JDP has long-standing concentrations in epidemiology, health behavior, and global health. It invites collaboration from faculty beyond the schools of public health — including SDSU’s School of Social Work and School of Exercise and Nutritional Science and UCSD’s Department of Medicine and Department of Psychiatry — to model the collaborative nature of public health.
The SDSU side of the program is directed by Heather Corliss, who also leads the health behavior track. The epidemiology and global health tracks are led by Shira Goldenberg and Elizabeth Reed, respectively.
The cross-campus JDP benefits students by providing additional resources, faculty expertise, and course options, helping them prepare for careers in public health research, practice, and education.
“Personally, I’m drawn to the SDSU–UCSD structure because it supports the kind of public health career I’m building: one focused on how evidence-based ideas are translated into practice, alongside human-centered design, creating and refining solutions that people actually want and will use,” said Mariah Allen Moore, president of the Public Health JDP Student Association.
The Public Health JDP is a research-focused program, as SDSU and UCSD are Research 1 (R1) universities, which signifies the “highest level of research activity and doctorate production.” Credit for this designation is due, in part, to the accomplishments of current and past JDP students.
“Our doctoral students are the budding experts and somewhat unsung heroes that you can find tirelessly conducting research, organizing local conferences, and developing their arsenals of expertise as part of the productivity of the university,” said Shan Ming Gao, the doctoral programs coordinator for SDSU’s School of Public Health.
Many JDP students have received accolades for their projects and research. In just the past year, several have won prestigious fellowships and awards.
“What I see among my peers is a strong desire not just to produce rigorous research, but to ensure that work is responsive to communities and grounded in real-world relevance,” Allen Moore said.
Each semester, many Public Health JDP students showcase the accumulation of their research in the form of dissertation defenses. Alongside the publication of dissertations, the dissertation defenses are part of the culminating experiences of these experts and display the rigor and breadth of Public Health JDP research.
“Public Health as a field has a fantastic culture of collaboration, and it shows in the program’s unique array of faculty mentors, student research areas, and dissertation topics,” Gao said.
JDP graduates have gone on to diverse public health careers from traditional research and professorship positions to leadership and industry roles. Several graduates, including Emily Schmied, Paula Stigler Granados, Brittnie Bloom, Shira Goldenberg, and Amanda Miller, have returned to SDSU as faculty in the School of Public Health.
The Public Health JDP accepts new students annually and boasts about seventy active students. Applications for fall 2027 will open in the fall of this year. Admissions information, along with student biographies and additional resources, can be found on the Public Health JDP’s website.
