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School of Education and Human Sciences

Community Health and Human Services Program at UAB

Community Health and Human Services Program at UAB

The Community Health and Human Services (CHHS) program prepares professionals to improve the quality of life for others through health education, social service programs, and non-profit work. CHHS offers undergraduate degrees and minors and graduate-level degrees and certificates in Community Health, Human Services, and Community Health Promotion.  The focus of the CHHS program is to prepare students to address critical social issues in public and community health individual and group settings and among diverse populations using culturally appropriate methodologies. Students demonstrate core competencies through our highly-rated fieldwork opportunities in business, industry, voluntary organizations, and government agencies. 

Community Health refers to the health status of a defined group of people and the actions and conditions, both private and public (governmental), to promote, protect, and preserve their health. Community Health is a dynamic and evolving discipline that encompasses health education and health promotion. Health educators develop programs and policies directed at reducing risk factors, decreasing acute and chronic disease burden, and promoting health through the adoption of healthy lifestyles. 

Human Services is broadly defined, uniquely approaching the objective of meeting human needs through an interdisciplinary knowledge base, focusing on prevention and remediation of problems, and maintaining a commitment to improving service populations' overall quality of life. The human services profession promotes improved service delivery systems by addressing the quality of direct services and seeking to improve accessibility, accountability, and coordination among professionals and agencies in service delivery.

UAB CHHS Alumni - Where are they now?

  • Michelle R. Brow, Erin Blanchard, and Valley McCurry

    Three alumni from the UAB Community Health and Human Services Ph.D. program were recently awarded funding by the Association of Schools Advancing Health Professions' (ASAHP) Interprofessional Innovation Grant to Increase Empathy and Awareness of Stigma Associated with Opioid Use Disorder using Tabletop Simulation. CHHS alumna Michelle R. Brown is leading the study, with Erin Blanchard and Valley McCurry, along with others from the UAB School of Health Professions. Raising awareness of the stigma associated with substance use disorders (SUD) is crucial to increasing access to treatment for SUD. Findings from this project will inform the implementation of the Opioid Simulation to a broader group of health professions students.

  • Wendy K. Jefferson

    Wendy K. Jefferson, a graduate of the Community Health and Human Services master's program in community health, has been hired by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration as a Public Health Advisor. As a Public Health Advisor, she will use her Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services knowledge to provide consultation, guidance, and assistance and to carry out and promote public health grants management and related activities in Federal, local, state, and international settings.

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