About the Program
The Occupational Epidemiology Program is part of the Environmental Health Sciences (EHS) division in the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley. The Graduate Division at UC Berkeley offers academic degrees, MS and PhD, and the School of Public Health offers the MPH professional degree. The overall goal of this training program is to train future practitioners (MPH students) and researchers (PhD students) in occupational epidemiology. For all degree objectives, the curriculum provides fundamental knowledge in toxicology, epidemiology, biostatistics, exposure assessment and control, and the training to be able to integrate these disciplines in the interpretation and conduct of epidemiologic studies.
Goals of the Program
The goal of this program is to train epidemiologists who can provide, and interpret, such data using state-of-the-art methods in epidemiology, biostatistics, exposure and risk assessment, and occupational health surveillance. The correct interpretation of epidemiologic results is necessary for their translation to policy agencies that evaluate potential health effects of a wide range of work-related and ambient exposures and recommend exposure limits, labelling, surveillance programs or other health policies. It follows that there is a national need for epidemiologists who understand potential hazards in both the work environment and can translate epidemiologic results into public health interventions. Over the past several years, we have also expanded our research focus to include new analytical methods in occupational health research. UC Berkeley now has an outstanding and internationally recognized research program in occupational epidemiology with the expertise in the application of causal g-methods, such as g-computation and g-estimation, to address healthy worker survivor bias.