Community Health Education
Join the frontlines to improve community health and address health inequity.
Broaden your understanding of how social, economic, environmental, and political factors interact to influence public health. Learn how to promote and protect the health of all people and their communities. Collaborate with fellow students, faculty, and community members to reduce health disparities and promote health equity.
As a graduate student in UMass Amherst’s Community Health Education program, you’ll gain the skills and knowledge to effect social change. Gain inspiration from teacher-scholars who daily enact a commitment to understanding and addressing root causes of health inequities. Community Health Education at UMass features a well-defined innovative curriculum that sets our program apart. Our program is nationally and internationally recognized for developing innovative, culture-centered methodologies and other advanced methods of community health promotion research and practice. The program's diverse strengths include:
- A focus on historically marginalized and vulnerable populations
- Community-engaged research
- Epidemiologic and linked administrative data for life-course tracking and population health
- Multimethod approaches to understanding and addressing the opioid epidemic
Explore our programs
Jump in faculty research funding for the School of Public Health and Health Sciences from 2017 to 2022
Upon graduation, 100% of our graduates are fully employed or continuing with education and/or fellowships
Research Areas
As a former counselor specializing in addiction recovery, MPH student Sam Tarplin takes his experience and forges his own path in addiction research.
Benefits list
Degrees With Great Value
Receive the value of New England’s only publicly funded school of public health. Most graduates of the master’s programs go on to work in hospitals, clinical settings, nonprofits, and government agencies. Graduates of the PhD programs go on to hold research positions at leading institutions.
Cutting-Edge Research
Work with faculty on community-engaged research through the Center for Community Health Equity Research. Join the opioid intervention efforts of a $10-million Justice Community Opioid Innovation Network (JCOIN) grant. And work on big data-driven projects examining health care legislation and policy.
Make a Difference in Communities
Make a difference as a public health professional in a variety of settings, from small nonprofits to large global health agencies, local health agencies to federal regulatory agencies, and as an educator or administrator from the community level to the major health care system level.
Alumni spotlight
In the Spotlight
“I chose UMass because of the tight-knit community and the amazing and supportive faculty. The School of Public Health and Health Sciences has provided me with many opportunities to practice public health and also join faculty in their cutting-edge research.”
Community stories
Chavon Hamilton-Burgess
Featured Faculty
Elizabeth Evans
Professor of Community Health Education
Aline Gubrium
Kathryn Derose
Krishna Poudel
Director, Institute for Global Health
Susan J. Shaw
Program Head, Community Health Education
Director, Center for Community Health Equity Research
In the News
Evans Appointed Chair of Health Promotion and Policy
The SPHHS has announced the appointment of Professor Elizabeth Evans as Chair of the Department of Health Promotion and Policy effective September 1, 2026.
SPHHS Faculty Receive 2026 Faculty Research/Healey Endowment Grants
Leontine Alkema, Michal Horny, Joshua Liddy, and Krishna Poudel are among the UMass Amherst researchers awarded Faculty Research/Healey Endowment Grants.
SPHHS Students Thrive in Summer Internships with Support from the Office of Career Planning
Students had the opportunity to focus primarily on their unpaid internships with a boost from a scholarship from the Office of Career Planning.
Community Health Education
Addressing health inequity and improving community health for all.