NOW AVAILABLE - CEPH Accreditation Criteria for Standalone Baccalaureate Programs in Public Health

The Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) is pleased to announce the release of Accreditation Criteria for Standalone Baccalaureate Programs in Public Health, adopted June 2013. These standards are the culmination of a multi-year effort to extend quality assurance opportunities to the ever-growing number of standalone baccalaureate public health programs (SBP). SBP are defined as programs that are not affiliated with graduate-level public health programs or schools of public health.

The Council would like to extend special thanks to all those who participated in the development of these criteria over the years, including participants in the 2011 Thought Leaders meeting, criteria development workgroups, focus groups and all those who submitted comments during the comment period.

Feedback received by the Council during the public comment period was extremely helpful. The Council directly incorporated many specific suggestions into the criteria, and all suggestions will inform the development of guidance and training documents. The criteria must be sufficiently flexible to apply well to baccalaureate public health programs of all types, including those with various areas of content focus and those with professional versus pre-professional intended outcomes, and this principle often guided the Council’s decision about which comments should be integrated into the document.

The Council will add rationale, information and examples related to criteria interpretation in the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section of the CEPH website. New FAQs, as well as other opportunities for information and technical assistance, will be developed and made available throughout the summer and fall.

We look forward to working with all interested baccalaureate programs and ask for your patience as we prepare all templates, application forms and FAQ/technical assistance documents.

The Council expects to accept its first SBP applications in late-fall 2013 for February 2014 application decisions. Following a self-study process, the first site visits are anticipated for fall 2015.

If your program may be interested in applying for accreditation in 2014 or 2015, please e-mail Nicole Williams at nwilliams@ceph.org.

As always, CEPH staff are available to answer your questions via phone, (202) 789-1050, or you should feel free to e-mail Laura King orNicole Williams.