Posted 11/5/2008

A DrPH degree should mean a person has
executive/management skills, Kirby says

Susan Kirby

Arnold School alumna Dr. Susan Kirby has been named to a national panel working to set core competencies for persons seeking a doctor of public health degree.

The president of a San Diego social and health marketing firm, Kirby co-chairs the communications workgroup for an Association of Schools of Public Health project to determine the communication and marketing academic and leadership credentials for doctoral candidates at ASPH member institutions.

“The reason we’re doing it is to be sure that the people on the frontlines of public health – state, federal, local, foundations, nonprofits, and even private sector firms – have the executive/management skills to be leaders in their communities within the public health arena,” said Kirby.

The larger project, launched two years ago, is entitled the Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) Competency Model Development Project. Recommendations from the project are expected to be available for dissemination to member schools in August 2009.

Kirby explained that each of the project’s seven work groups is co-chaired by one person from “the academic world and the other from the practice world.”

Dr. Dan Boatright, senior associate dean and professor at the University of Oklahoma School of Public Health, is the other co-chair of the workgroup.

Besides communications, the other workgroups embrace a gamut of public health skills, including: advocacy, community/cultural orientation, critical analysis, leadership, management, professionalism, and ethics.

Kirby earned two degrees from USC’s Arnold School: her master’s in 1990 and her DrPH in 1993. It was a valuable experience, she recalls, because faculty members not only were skilled researchers but also worked closely with the state health department and a variety of community projects.

After finishing her doctoral studies, she worked for the Emory University School of Public Health for four years. She then became a health communication specialist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where she worked closely with centers on communication and marketing program development, founded the Marketing Research Resource Center, and led a CDC brand identity project.

The CDC post helped hone her marketing skills, but it was a demanding job and while she loved it, “I was at the point where I needed a change of pace and a break,” she said. She also wanted to get back to more hands-on public health practice with state and local agencies.

That opportunity came following a chance meeting on an airplane that led to romance and an opportunity to leave government work and move to San Diego.

“I always lived in the South and I thought, as a public health professional, I should live in at least one other entirely different culture,” she said. It has been an enriching and eye opening experience to say the least.

In 2001, she founded Kirby Marketing Solutions Inc. that specializes in bringing a marketing mindset and communication excellence to organizations that “do good.”

Her clients include the CDC, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, CALCASA, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Kansas Health Foundation, L.A. County. California Center for Physical Activity, National Institutes for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.