Curriculum

The field of precision health offers several excellent career paths. In addition to academia, career pathways include pharmaceutical industry, policy positions within the healthcare sector, and novel informatics and IT fields that focus on health. For such careers, students require solid training in not only the science behind precision health innovations, but also the ethical and patient related factors that cut across disciplines.

The key precision health competency domains are:

  1. Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of Precision Health 
  2. Data Science and Predictive Health Analytics 
  3. Biosocial Determinants of Health/Policy/Economics 
  4. Human Genetics in Health and Disease/Molecular Medicine 
  5. Bioinformatics/Computational Genomics 
  6. Consumer Health Informatics and Healthcare Systems Engineering for Precision Health 

The Precision Health Graduate Certificate requires:

  • A minimum of ten (10) graduate credit hours of coursework: These credits must come from at least two different precision health competency domains (listed 1-6 above) and an effort should be made to include all precision health domains (Discovery, Treatment, and Health). Additionally, as part of the Rackham Graduate College rules, no more than one-sixth of the credits required for a master’s degree may be double-counted with the Graduate Precision Health Certificate. NOTE: Double-counted rules are irrelevant to PhD students who do not seek a master’s degree.
  • Participation in the precision health seminar. The seminar can be taken for either 0.5 credit or 1.0 credit each semester for a total of 2 credits. Participation in 8 Precision Health seminars/ departmental journal clubs/LHS Collaboratory events for a total of two (2) credit hours.
    • Submission of a 1-page, double-spaced reflection focused on comparing/contrasting the seminar topic to your interests in Precision Health.
  • Attendance at the annual Precision Health Symposium, which provides graduate students with an opportunity to present the results of their research in talks and poster sessions if applicable. Attendance is required to ensure the students’ interaction with precision health faculty. PhD students will be encouraged to make an oral or poster presentation.
      • Submission of a 1-page, double-spaced reflection focused on the symposium as a whole or a particular session(s) of interest to you, comparing/contrasting your interests in Precision Health.
  • Attendance at the Precision Health Orientation session (1 hour).
  • Other non-credit activity requirements:
      • Attendance at other non-credit, networking activities are encouraged, but not required, such as meeting with other students at seminars, in addition to guest speakers when available, networking with the external advisory board at the annual Precision Health Symposium and other opportunities as they arise.

Student will be paired with a Precision Health certificate faculty member with similar research interests, who will serve in a mentor role. Students are encouraged to meet at least once with their assigned faculty member while completing the program. Faculty members will be responsible for reading seminar reflections and providing feedback to the students. This will help to build relationships and provide an assessment of student progression toward certificate completion.