PMHW was built around a core truth: mental health is public health. Americans need people who can change systems, not just study symptoms. We created a program that trains students to work at the population level, where prevention happens, across mental health promotion, substance use prevention, policy, and behavioral health programs. It’s for people who want a career with real-world impact, and who want to graduate with skills they can use immediately.

PMHW is a public health degree with a laser focus on mental health and well-being. But it’s not purely clinical and it’s not purely academic. It’s the bridge between evidence, policy, systems, and real-world programs. Students learn how to design and evaluate interventions, understand behavioral health systems, and translate research into action so that they are ready for leadership roles in government, healthcare, nonprofits, and community-based organizations.

Experiential learning is core to the PMHW program. Students don’t just read about programs, they build and test real solutions through applied practice, practicums, and capstone projects. You learn how to do needs assessments, write evaluation plans, create policy briefs, analyze behavioral health data, and deliver a final product that a real partner can use. You graduate with a portfolio, not just a transcript.

Students graduate with skills to turn data into decisions and evidence into programs. For example, that includes:

• Designing and evaluating mental health and substance use prevention programs
• Analyzing behavioral health systems and policy levers
• Building implementation-ready plans that work in real communities
• Communicating results clearly, through briefs, presentations, and community dissemination.

These skills are exactly what employers need right now.

PMHW is for people who want to make mental health better at scale. Whether you’re coming from public health, psychology, social work, education, neuroscience, anthropology, community work, or policy. If you care about prevention and equity, and you want skills that translate directly into meaningful jobs, you’ll thrive here.

We’re living through a mental health era. Youth mental health, substance use, loneliness, burnout, trauma, displacement…these are not side issues. They’re shaping education, work, healthcare and community safety. PMHW trains the next generation of professionals to address mental health upstream, with prevention, systems redesign, and evidence-based public health solutions.

If you want a degree that gives you both meaning and momentum, PMHW is it! You’ll learn with experts and peers who are passionate about mental health, you’ll build real-world experience through applied work, and you’ll graduate ready to lead.