CURRICULUM, INSTRUCTION, AND PEDAGOGY article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1612610
This article is part of the Research TopicCatalyzing Public Health Leadership Research, Practice, Education, and TrainingView all 13 articles
Shaping Future Leaders: Developing an MPH Leadership Curriculum through Problem-Based Learning
Provisionally accepted
- 1Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, United States
- 2University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States
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Leadership is essential to public health practice, yet few MPH programs offer structured, integrated approaches to cultivating leadership competencies. At the University of North Carolina's Gillings School of Global Public Health, the Leadership in Practice (LIP) MPH concentration responds to this gap by embedding problem-based learning (PBL) throughout a multi-course curriculum designed to prepare students for real-world leadership challenges. Drawing on interdisciplinary faculty expertise and a constructivist pedagogical philosophy, the LIP curriculum emphasizes systems thinking, strategic decision-making, and values-based leadership development. This manuscript describes how PBL is applied across five required courses to help students synthesize technical knowledge with collaborative problem-solving and applied leadership skills. We also present alumni and employer feedback that illustrates the curriculum's impact on workplace readiness and leadership capacity. This case study offers a model for integrating leadership development into graduate public health education and calls for broader adoption of applied, interdisciplinary pedagogies that prepare students to lead transformative change in diverse public health settings.
Keywords: Leadership, curriculum & instruction, Masters in public health, Problem Based Leaming (PBL), Workforce preparedness, collaborative problem solving, interdiscipinary
Received: 16 Apr 2025; Accepted: 24 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Mchale, Excellent, Fleming and Upshaw. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Vaughn Mamlin Upshaw, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, United States
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