Delta Omega, the Honorary Society in Public Health, announced the winner of the 2008 Delta Omega Award for Innovative Public Health Curriculum at its annual business meeting on Monday, October 27. Dr. Amy Lee (CEOMPH), national president-elect of Delta Omega, and Dean Donna Petersen (South Florida), national president of Delta Omega, presented the award to Dr. Muriel Harris, professor at the University of Louisville School of Public Health and Information Sciences, for "Critical Thinking and Program Evaluation." Delta Omega created the annual award in 2001 to applaud the important role public health graduate education plays in the development and maintenance of a strong, active and well-prepared public health profession.

The award also serves to acknowledge that schools and programs of public health and their faculty develop and implement creative public health educational offerings that bridge the gap between public health academia and practice, and to stimulate the evolution of innovative graduate public health courses that are responsive to the educational needs of the public health work force.

The award objectives are to highlight innovative public health graduate course curricula that integrate actual public health practice experiences and examples into classroom discussions and exercises; highlight models of collaborative, comprehensive and community-based public health practice and scholarship; emphasize the application of public health principles and science-based decision-making; focus on skills development; involve community-sector partners in teaching; and use case studies and other examples of inter-disciplinary projects suitable for a multi-disciplinary audience.

A list of the previous recipients of the Curriculum Award can be found here. For more information about Delta Omega, please visit www.deltaomega.org.