Keeping communities healthy

FLC students working in a laboratory

As a student in our Public Health department, you’ll gain the knowledge and skills to keep large groups of people healthy in a way that individualized medicine cannot. You’ll learn how social factors, policy, genetics, education, and the environment impact the health of whole communities.

Use this knowledge as you learn methods of disease prevention, health promotion and protection, and caring for communities or other groups of people.

Broadly informed, varied in opportunity

The field of public health incorporates information about human physiology, biology, communications, the social sciences, and other fields. Public health also offers wildly varying career opportunities—from leading contact tracing teams to conducting diabetes education to shaping public policy.

Our department offers you the flexibility to tailor your degree toward your interests and aspirations.

Public Health major & minor
FLC Public Health students collecting environmental data in the field

Applied & experiential

As a Public Health student, you'll blend coursework from public health with the natural and social sciences to gain interdisciplinary knowledge important to public health practice. You'll have opportunities to work in the community, with FLC campus organizations, and to conduct research. You may work with organizations such as:

  • Southwestern Colorado Area Health Education Center (SWCAHEC)
  • San Juan Basin Public Health
  • Mercy Regional Medical Center
  • Good Food Collective
  • Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health
  • Village Aid Project
  • Navajo Nation Special Diabetes Program

Faculty led projects

If you see yourself working in global health, you might look into the Foundation for Sustainable Community-based Development (FSD) in Uganda as an internship site. Or, if you’re more suited to research, maybe work with FLC faculty on projects concerning antibiotic-resistant microbes. Whatever direction you want to go in Public Health, your faculty can help you navigate a path there.

Meet our Public Health faculty
Community members building water infrastructure as part of a Village Aid Project program.