CURRICULUM, INSTRUCTION, AND PEDAGOGY article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Education and Promotion
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1632118
Translating Knowledge to Practice: Application of the Public Health Apprenticeship
Provisionally accepted
- College of Public Health, University of Kentucky, Lexington, United States
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As public health challenges continue to grow and deepen in complexity, public health workforce roles are becoming increasingly difficult to fill. As a result, the public health educational system must adapt to address these dynamic workforce needs. Health-related professions commonly utilize experiential learning models such as post-graduate programs, practicums or applied practice experiences, apprenticeship, and mentorship. However, there is a gap in practice-based, post-master's programs to develop these skills for Master of Public Health graduates. Accordingly, this paper proposes the public health apprenticeship, guided by the Cognitive Apprenticeship Theory, as a solution to fill this gap. A real-world application of the public health apprenticeship is described, and development of public health competencies are measured to evaluate the effectiveness of the public health apprenticeship model.
Keywords: pedagogy, Public Health, Apprenticeship, cognitive apprenticeship theory, Public Health Practice
Received: 20 May 2025; Accepted: 11 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Pendergrass and Carman. 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: Mary Elizabeth Pendergrass, College of Public Health, University of Kentucky, Lexington, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.