The landscape of undergraduate public health writing instruction: a qualitative assessment

Strong writing skills are arguably the most useful and marketable trait of a graduating public health student. This study reviewed the national landscape for approaches to integrating writing skill development into undergraduate public health curricula with implications for the development of effective writing pedagogy within public health programs. Leaders of all 100 Council on Education for Public Health-accredited undergraduate public health schools, programs, and independent units in the US were invited to participate in interviews and provide information on student writing challenges. A total of 30 staff or faculty participated in this semi-structured interview between November 2022 and February 2023. Half also provided documents for additional review to complement the interviews. Information shared by interviewed participants was coded and organized into six categories by researchers: approaches, assignments, support, concepts, context, and needs. Based on interview data and complementary documents, instructional commonalities identified among programs included a wide variety of writing assignments administered in courses, such as literature reviews and needs assessments. In contrast, practices supporting student success are less varied, and frequently include repeated reading, parsing, and writing scientific articles. These activities have meaningful effects on students and are complementary to prolonged practice in managing and using citations. Many pedagogical approaches can be taken when guiding students to build those skills, including the high-impact educational practice of scaffolding. Findings were placed within a framework of considerations for writing skill instruction in undergraduate public health curricula. The developed framework has implications for improved understanding and broad-based context related to pedagogical practice of writing instruction in undergraduate public health, with implications for improved student support, faculty instruction, and bachelors program curricula.