Dalla Lana School of Public Health

The Dalla Lana School of Public Health community is pleased and excited to be welcoming Cohort VI to the Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) program (September 2026). We have a strong group of professionals in our first five cohorts, most of whom are at or approaching mid-career. As students are now graduating from earlier cohorts, the impact vibe is palpable.

Our students will be spending the coming years strengthening their academic skills in parallel to applying them to the many public health leadership challenges society face daily. While we will never lose sight of the core public health disciplines (e.g., infectious and chronic disease epidemiology, environmental health, biometrics, health services), we will ensure critical awareness and appropriate application of emerging disciplines that will define our future (e.g., artificial intelligence and genomics). Global health leadership, our program’s primary foundational competency, is woven into all we do.

With a focus on the applied and practical, the DrPH student will benefit from our strong faculty and local and global public health networks. As our current cohorts demonstrate, the program is focused on developing passionate professionals, addressing practical public health challenges. Students will build their competencies across many dimensions of public health: leadership, health systems, evidence generation and appraisal—all leading to program implementation. In parallel to coursework, an applied project leads to a dissertation contributing to our graduate’s ability to make a meaningful difference to the community and systems they serve.

Our goal is to further develop and elevate our public health leaders and decision-makers who make up our professional cohorts. They will be impacting people’s lives and well-being through experiences informed by the DrPH journey.

Please join me in welcoming cohort VI into Canada‘s first DrPH  program, as we continue to fulfil a key strategic initiative for our community.

Ted Witek