The Department of Community and Behavioral Health prepares graduates to improve the health of communities through health promotion and disease prevention.
Students actively engage with communities to develop approaches and solutions to everyday health issues.
Our MPH and undergrad-to-grad students learn the skills to develop, implement, and evaluate culturally appropriate and theoretically-based health behavior interventions at the individual, community and policy levels. Our PhD students learn the skills to conduct culturally appropriate, theoretically-based research in health promotion and disease prevention including community-engaged research.
The faculty in our department have expertise in a wide range of community and behavioral health areas including health inequities, nutrition and physical activity, health communication, substance use and addictions, mental health, maternal and child health, and aging.
Prospective CBH Students
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Latest CBH News
- Madison Snitker finds “best of both worlds” as a health educator and emergency preparedness coordinator
- Gilbert, Lee receive CSSI Surveying the Social World funding
- Shruthi Bannur receives Stanley Award for International Research
- University of Iowa College of Public Health ranked No. 19 in the nation
- Rima Afifi, Lisa Roth honored with 2025 Discovery and Innovation awards
- CPH faculty selected for National Academy of Medicine Emerging Leaders Forum
- Smita Singhal: Aligning personal and academic interests with core values
Our people
At the Department of Community and Behavioral Health, we pride ourselves on being a welcoming, diverse community of faculty, staff, and students, all here to help you succeed.
Areas of Research Interest
We encourage people to make healthy choices and research the best ways of doing so. We do this by focusing these four key research areas:
Rural Health
We consider “rural” to be a context, a social determinant, a culture, and a skill set. We are shaping scholarship by critically engaging with the definition of rurality, promoting rural health through novel approaches, and changing the face of what people view as rural contexts.
Community Engagement
Our central value is partnership with all the communities with which we work. We lift up their voices; start from their strengths, assets, and needs; and engage with them to preserve their dignity and culture. This ensures that our work is responsive, relevant, adapted, accepted, and sustainable.
Culturally Informed Intervention
We carry out quantitative and qualitative research to identify ecological determinants of health and health behavior, then use this evidence to develop and implement interventions to create positive change. We leverage a solid theory-based scientific foundation that guides interventions.
Health Equity
Health equity research seeks to identify and examine the social factors impacting health. In our research, we seek to address these social drivers of health, which have an influence above and beyond individuals’ health-related knowledge and behaviors. Accordingly, we conduct research to identify and analyze health disparities and create interventions to address these disparities in order to help individuals and communities achieve the highest possible health status and best quality of life.
A guiding question in our work is: How can we integrate the department’s other strategic areas (rural health, community engagement and participatory approaches, and theoretically based and culturally informed interventions) to work towards health equity?
Our research centers
Native Center for Behavioral Health
Develops programs to support the behavioral health workforce in Native American and Alaska Native communities across the country.
Prevention Research Center for Rural Health
Improves the health of rural communities by developing and testing evidence-based interventions for rural and/or micropolitan populations.