Throughout the United States, undergraduate programs in public health are rapidly expanding. Dr. Connie Evashwick is involved with Frontiers as co-Editor of Frontiers in Public Health Education and Promotion. Given the growth of the number of programs and students in this field, she and colleagues Dr. Cheryl Addy, Dr. Daniel Gerber, and Dr. David Dyjack suggested creating a Research Topic on Undergraduate Education for Public Health in the United States.

“There isn’t a place for faculty from all types of higher education institutions to get together and share common frameworks,” says Evashwick .

The four guest associate editors of the Research Topic were pleasantly surprised by its success. Instead of the ten articles they had expected, they received twice as many articles as required to produce an e-book. The e-book, now available, contains 20 articles written by 35 authors. As of March 2016, the Research Topic had received more than 28,250 views on its Frontiers website.

To develop this topic further, Evashwick would like to focus more on new programs being developed by universities and colleges that do not currently have schools of public health. She is also interested in doing more analytical analyses, particularly with regard to curriculum and competency content and the relationship between undergraduate and graduate education in public health and other health professions careers.

Another of her goals as co-chief editor is to expand the project to a worldwide perspective. “This particular Research Topic focuses just on the United States, we also want to look at public health education globally,” she explains.

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