Public health master’s program adds epidemiology concentration

By Chuck Gordon

With the discipline most likely needing a replenishment of workers in the coming years, Wingate University's master of public health program is implementing an epidemiology concentration. The concentration will begin in the spring of 2027.

Since 2021, when the MPH program launched, Wingate has offered only one concentration: health education and promotion. Over the past couple of years, reductions in the number of epidemiologists in federal public health agencies have signaled a need to prepare the public health workforce. Program director Dr. Shanta Dube sees signs that positions for epidemiologists will be needed at these agencies in the next few years.

Dr Shanta Dube

"I envision that in the coming years there is going to be a ramp-up of the workforce, when the dust completely settles," she says. "We're going to need early-career epidemiologists, community practitioners, to really build that workforce back up."

The epidemiology concentration will develop future professionals who will be prepared to conduct public health surveillance. At Wingate, students will learn how to investigate outbreaks, analyze and interpret data, and, most importantly, apply the data to protect populations. The tech world is also starting to hire epidemiologists as well. "They want to hire epidemiologists to build AI and predictive modeling, which I think is pretty interesting," Dube says.

Students will take three mandatory courses for the concentration: community epidemiology, case studies in epidemiology, and data analysis in epidemiology. In addition to these three concentration courses, they will learn about advocacy, public health programming and evaluation, leadership, and policy development.

Dube says the backgrounds of Wingate's public health faculty make epidemiology a natural fit. Dube spent 14 years as an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control, while the program's other full-time faculty member, assistant professor Dr. Alyssa McNulty-Nebel, spent three years with the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service. Adjunct faculty members Dr. Jessica Pavlick and Dr. Allison Seidel also have epidemiology backgrounds.

Dube says that aside from potential job growth in the field, Wingate started the epidemiology concentration because of demand from potential students.

"A lot of students have asked in past years if we have an epidemiology concentration, and we've had to turn them away, because we didn't," she says.

The new concentration also dovetails nicely with an agreement Wingate's Department of Public Health signed in June with Cone Health in Greensboro that enables the healthcare system's residents, doctoral-level clinicians and physician assistants to earn their MPH after completing only 33 credit hours of coursework, as opposed to the standard 42, because of their prior experience.

"That applicant pool is going to be clinicians, and so an epidemiology concentration is a natural fit," she says. "It will prepare them in healthcare settings for outbreaks, to be able to surveil their patient population and provide the value-based care they're being tasked to provide, really focusing on population health."

Learn more about Wingate's master of public health program.

Sept. 24, 2026