Making a real-world impact
As part of the Master of Public Health program in the School of Public Health Sciences, students are required to partner with a client on a project that will meet a public health need. As well as providing students with the opportunity to develop skills that will help them academically, personally, and professionally, it also allows partner organizations to get a fresh perspective on their activities and delivers them a useful product.
The Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario and Ontario Forensic Pathology Service (OCC) work collaboratively to determine how and why people die. The data they collect can provide vital information to prevent deaths in the future. Getting this information into the hands of stakeholders who are better positioned to make program and policy changes to prevent future deaths is vital. Looking at their data, the OCC identified that for some marginalized populations non-natural causes of death (for example accidents and suicide) can be higher than other groups. Identifying improvements in how data are shared between the OCC and stakeholders has the potential to prevent deaths, particularly as it relates to marginalized populations. This became the focus for one group of Master of Public Health (MPH) students working on their capstone project.
For their final project, Mary, Haminat, Chad, Ola, Karley and Lyricy joined forces as the McKhol Consultants and through one of their contacts, connected with the Office of the Chief Coroner to outline a plan for their project. Over several months, they collaborated to conduct a literature review and jurisdictional scan.
Four student tips on doing a capstone project
1. Use the fact that there’s many heads in a group project wisely. Students come with different backgrounds, strengths, and experiences – be sure to listen and discuss to learn from each other.
2. Use technology that’s available to you. For us, this meant using a web-based software platform that was new to us. We also decided that only one of us would take the training and share with the rest of the team just the parts we needed to know from our project. Once again, tapping into working effectively as a team.
3. Be sure to come up with clear and concise questions that you need answered at each stage of your project. This helps all team members work clearly.
4. See inevitable conflicting ideas as a learning opportunity. Open and honest communication is the best way to ensure the work gets done in a way that is to the relative satisfaction of everyone.
Looking at existing data as well as surveying various jurisdictions about their experiences has allowed the group to consider evidence that will help them to inform the OCC of potential gaps to improve communication and processes and hopefully ultimately, prevent future non-natural deaths. As they wrap up their time together in the program, they will be analyzing their findings and hope to put together recommendations for their client and stakeholders.
Various professional backgrounds come together
The MPH program brings together public health professionals from diverse backgrounds, allowing them to approach the capstone project from different angles. The McKhol Consultants team had backgrounds as varied as nursing, data analytics, and nonprofit programing. This allowed them to collectively tap into their various individual strengths, learn from each other, and enjoy rich conversations about the project throughout the entire process.
Most of the program is online, where the cohort only gathers in-person at the beginning and end of the program. This presented a challenge that has become familiar to many of us over the last couple of years – working remotely from each other. Students in the MPH program are often simultaneously working jobs full or part time as well as for many, raising a family.
The MPH program provided me with the structure I needed to be able to balance work, family and school.
Karley says, “Juggling schedules, varying capacities and commitments was tricky, but we found tactics to help us overcome these issues. Ultimately, the MPH program provided the structure I needed to be able to balance work, family and school.” Despite these challenges, they were able to navigate timetables and commitments, decide collaboratively on which project to select, work out the project's objectives and deliverables, allocate work between them, discuss their findings and present them back to their cohort and in the coming weeks, their client.
Conducting both a literature and jurisdictional review meant the team had to work out how to effectively tackle both aspects of the project, coming together to discuss and assign tasks. The diversity of the group presents both its greatest strength and one of its most difficult challenges. By setting up weekly meetings, team members would review, discuss, and provide feedback at each stage of the project. Tapping into the potential of six different perspectives is not always easy: “Challenges will invariably arise, including opposing ideas about the work. How those challenges are handled is an important learning experience in its own right. Open and honest communication (which is sometimes easier said than done) is the best way to ensure the work gets done in a way that is to the relative satisfaction of everyone,” explains Ola.
Understanding purpose
I was able to learn new skills to practice as a public health professional - I learned how to be more effective at monitoring and evaluation to be more culturally competent and sensitive in designing and implementing public health programs.
In the Capstone course the group identifies five competencies that they want to integrate as a way to enhance the learning from the program in the culminating course. Reflection after the project helps students understand how this experience can help them translate new learned skills and experiences to other facets of their personal and professional lives. “I was able to learn new skills to practice as a public health professional - I learned how to be more effective at monitoring and evaluation and, more importantly, be more culturally competent and sensitive in designing and implementing public health programs.” - Mary