Graduate Certificate in Emergency Management
Confidently lead healthcare teams in times of crisis and public emergency.
UNE’s 100% online Graduate Certificate in Emergency Management was designed to support federal and state governments as they continue to develop and implement plans for emergency efforts. Healthcare systems also rely on qualified professionals to carry out each phase of the emergency management process: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.
Adverse effects often experienced by communities and hospitals during times of emergency are best managed by health professionals who can reduce chaos with firm instruction, precise care coordination, and a focused order of procedure.
Each course within this graduate certificate has been designed to educate students on current practices, technologies, and reporting that are required for a successful response to emergency situations.
4
Courses
Each course has been designed by public health experts & administrators with employer demand in mind.
8
Months to Complete
Gain advanced credentials in one semester, or less, with dedicated coaching & support.
8
Week Course Length
Concentrated learning with ready-to-use skills for modern emergency management.
Graduate Certificate Curriculum
The Graduate Certificate in Emergency Management requires you to complete 12 credit hours of required courses:
Students in the course will examine concepts, theories, and best practices for communication in the professional workplace. The goal of this course is to refine your written, oral and visual communication. Participants in this course will develop strategies to create meaningful communication for a vast audience. Students will enhance their skills in natural and scholarly writing, oral presentation, and visual demonstrations.
The world about us provides for our life, but also can be dangerous to our health. This dichotomy is the essence of the study of environmental health. Students completing this course will be able to apply scientific knowledge to evaluate the risks that exist in the world about them. This course is designed to provide students with an introduction to the field of environmental health in an ecosystem’s context. The course will emphasize the recognition, evaluation, and control of hazards including toxic chemicals, fibers and dust, ionizing radiation, and infectious agents. General principles and global processes will be linked to local issues and the regulatory environment through case studies and interviews with subject matter experts.
This course explores the range of legal and ethical issues facing healthcare administrators and providers. Students will gain expertise analyzing legal and ethical dimensions of healthcare from administrative, clinical, and organizational perspectives. Current issues, as well as perennial conflicts in healthcare law and ethics, will provide real-world case studies for students to research and debate. Throughout the course, students will gain practice integrating core healthcare law and ethics concepts and practices into their leadership approaches to ensuring excellent patient care.
Natural and man-made disasters present complex problems that require coordinated responses from multiple municipalities and emergency responders. In this course, students will gain expertise in developing, implementing, and evaluating comprehensive emergency prevention and response plans. The influence of legal, social, environmental, and medical requirements and limitations on emergency management policies will be explored with additional focus on post disaster recovery.
All courses are graduate level and taught in eight-week terms. The Emergency Management certificate is two semesters in length, which is the time equivalent of eight months (presuming you choose to take a regular course load consisting of one course each eight-week term, two courses per semester). However, to accelerate earning your certificate, you may complete the program in four to six months by taking more than one course each eight-week term.
Choose your own start time
The Graduate Certificate in Emergency Management can fit into your busy schedule with multiple start times throughout the year. UNE Online offers rolling admission with three start times—Spring, Summer, and Fall—so you can begin as soon as you’re ready to start.
Start with a Graduate Certificate, Transfer it to a Master’s Degree Later
Students who successfully complete the graduate certificate can “stack” earned credits into UNE’s 100% online Master of Healthcare Administration (MHA) degree program. This can be done immediately or within several years after completion of the graduate certificate. Reach out to an enrollment counselor at healthcareadmin@une.edu or (866) 722-5096 for more details on this opportunity.
After completing the four courses in the Emergency Management Graduate Certificate, to earn the Master of Healthcare Administration, students would then need to take the following eight courses:
This course provides an overview of the history, challenges, and opportunities facing healthcare administrators today. Topics will include the ongoing transition from a pay-for-services model of healthcare delivery to accountable care networks, emerging public health and healthcare partnerships, and the need for analytics that can address the particular characteristics of big health data.
This course introduces students to central health informatics tools, techniques, and concepts used to improve health outcomes through technology. Students explore various healthcare technology platforms, how data is used in healthcare, and how the need for cybersecurity and health data privacy shape the information infrastructure that powers modern healthcare. This course offers students a framework for deeper understanding of many of the concepts explored in subsequent coursework.
This course explores the dynamic between healthcare delivery and leveraging data for enhanced patient outcomes. Given an increased scrutiny on empirical value-based care metrics for payer reimbursement, the strategic use of data will be key in new continuum of care models. Students will complete this course with a solid understanding of healthcare quality standards, the regulations around those standards, and how they are affected by the use of technology and data analysis. Key themes will include quality improvement methodologies, measuring and interpreting quality data, strategies to increase healthcare process reliability.
This course explores the challenges and opportunities facing healthcare leaders and organizations in an age of accountable care, and examines the critical role health data and informatics can and should play in strategic management. Using case-based study techniques, students explore practice and system management, strategic planning, and change leadership. Students combine these insights into health leadership with the actionable insights offered through effective health informatics and business intelligence practices, to craft optimal solutions to internal organizational processes and to external business decisions.
This course explores the fundamentals of finance and economics in a health care system at both the local system and national levels. Healthcare leadership increasingly depends upon deep and strategic understanding of the complex payor systems that provide revenue to their organizations. Students will gain expertise crafting strategic approaches to managing market supply and demand, the economics of care and managed care, budgeting, accounting, and fiscal reporting.
The implementation or integration of major projects or initiatives, such as a new healthcare technology system requires careful planning and organization. This course will provide students with widely-accepted concepts and skills that can be used and scaled to successfully complete projects of varying sizes. Through course work, students will gain experience with the common language used by professionals involved in project management. Students will explore concepts of project charter, work breakdown structures, scheduling, risk planning, and project reporting.
This course brings together graduate students in public health, education, healthcare administration, health informatics, nutrition, and social work to work collaboratively to learn the fundamentals of policy-making as applied to the broad issue of student mental health in an educational setting. Students work in interprofessional groups to identify the social problem, describe the policy context, map potential policy solutions, and make final recommendations in an individual written policy analysis that incorporates learning from their interprofessional peers. Students will explore the structure and function of government systems as they relate to values-driven policy decisions.
This course is the culmination of the student’s learning throughout the Healthcare Administration program. Combining the leadership theories and practices they have studied, the challenges facing the healthcare sector they have explored, and the contextual practice they have gained through their focus area courses, students will develop a research-based inquiry into healthcare leadership that addresses a current or emerging challenge relevant to their professional goals.
Transfer credit policy
Upon acceptance, students may apply to transfer one 3-credit course (maximum three semester credits) into the Graduate Certificate in Emergency Management program. In order to be considered for transfer, the course must be classified as graduate level, have been taken within five years of application, have been completed with a grade of “B” or better, and be equivalent to one of the required program courses or an elective course that meets the goals of the student’s education.
To request consideration for transfer credit, a student must provide an official transcript and a course syllabus for each course. Your enrollment counselor or student support specialist can assist you with this request.
Students who successfully earn the Graduate Certificate in Emergency Management are able to:
- Recognize and apply best practices in responding to an emergency
- Evaluate and apply the design, implementation, and evaluation tools used in developing emergency preparedness training exercises
- Develop emergency planning skills by identifying and assessing the components of the Incident Action Plan (IAP) for all hazards and its use by the National Incident Management System (NIMS)
- Stack earned credits into a Master of Healthcare Administration degree
If you have any questions about the coursework or the program requirements, please speak to one of our enrollment counselors at the email or phone number below.