South Carolina Public Health Training Center

at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston

The South Carolina Public Health Training Center (PHTC) aims to advance knowledge in Public Health Sciences, including systems thinking, change management, persuasive communication, data analytics, problem solving, diversity and inclusion, resource management, and policy engagement as well as to provide education and training with respect to Public Health Sciences research, and to apply that training to public health practice in South Carolina. As such, our priority populations are public health and other health professionals in governmental organizations that serve medically underserved populations. The services provided include workforce trainings, faculty and student collaborative projects, and student placements. The South Carolina PHTC will work with other Region IV PHTC colleagues to assess public health training needs, identify training priorities, develop and implement a region-wide training and marketing plan, and evaluate the impact of its collaborative efforts. Serving the citizens of South Carolina, the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) is a state university with a medical center and six colleges that educate a broad range of health professionals (medicine, pharmacy, nursing, graduate studies, dental medicine, health professions). The Department of Public Health Sciences (DPHS), located in the College of Medicine, houses the South Carolina PHTC. The mission of the DPHS is to advance knowledge and scholarship in public health through its core activities in research, collaboration, education, and service to enable positive health outcomes locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. The DPHS has a faculty of 35 full time members and 30- doctoral students. The Department offers PhD and MS degrees and MPH degree programs in epidemiology, biostatistics, health behavior and health promotion.
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
  • Biostatistics/Epidemiology (Data Analytics)
  • Chronic Disease
  • Environmental Health
  • Geographic Information System (GIS)
  • Global Health
  • Health Behavior and Health Promotion
  • Health Informatics
  • Infectious Disease
  • Population Health and Public Health
  • Public Health Leadership
KEY PARTNERS
  • South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control
  • South Carolina Area Health Education Consortium
STAFF

Mulugeta Gebregziabher, PhD

Director
gebregz@musc.edu

Dr. Mulugeta Gebregziabher is Professor of Biostatistics at MUSC and Health Scientist and co-leader of the Methods Core with the VA Health Services Research and Development (HSR&D) funded Health Equity and Rural Outreach Innovation Center (HEROIC) at the Charleston VA. He is also affiliated with the MUSC Global Health Institute and College of Graduate Studies.He received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 2006 and he has been faculty at MUSC since July 2006. His research expertise is in longitudinal data analysis, missing data analysis, modeling outcomes with point mass at zero, multiple outcomes research, and analysis of very large datasets. He collaborates in several areas of clinical and health services research related to Diabetes, CKD, Stroke, TBI, CVD, lung cancer and HIV/AIDS.

His research interests span a wide range of topics and he collaborates with local, national and global researchers and scientists. He has contributed to more than 30 funded NIH, VA-HSR&D and intramural pilot grants with over 180 manuscripts in high-tier peer reviewed journals. He has contributed to novel methods for the design of studies and statistical analysis of health services and patient care outcomes data. He has developed and taught graduate courses on topics such as longitudinal data analysis, advanced regression, Bayesian analysis and statistics in epidemiology. He has trained several PhD students. He has been reviewer and editorial board member of scientific journals and international graduate students’ thesis. He had served as President of the South Carolina Chapter of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and Officer of the Statistics in Imaging. He has also served as President of the Statistical Society of Ethiopians in North America. He has received several honors for his teaching, mentoring, research and professional services. He is Fellow of the American Statistical Association.

He is currently serving as Vice-Chair for Academic Programs at the Department of Public Health Sciences at MUSC.

JacKetta R. Cobbs, PhD, MPH

Program Director
cobbsj@musc.edu

Dr. JacKetta Cobbs, is the Assistant Academic Program Director for the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina. She has over 15 years of public health experience, which includes being a Health Educator for a diabetes prevention program at a state health department, an Epidemiologist for the U.S. Army Public Health Command, and Project Manager for various research projects. Her research interests are health disparities and chronic disease epidemiology. As Program Director, she oversees the MPH and PhD programs, which includes student recruitment and retention, curriculum development, career development, program policy development, program evaluation, student engagement, and CEPH accreditation.