According to Healthy People 2010 (a study of the U.S. Public Health Infrastructure), there is growing demand for public health professionals, which will exponentially increase with the advent of recently passed health care reform legislation known as the Affordable Care Act. Historically, public health education existed as a professional degree program with training at the graduate level only. In 2003, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommended that public health education be accessible to all undergraduates.?

The theme of the Ferris Public Health program is???rural public health? which is intended to focus on populations that are underserved by virtue of their geographic location in rural settings. The BSPH program includes both traditional and accelerated tracks, with the accelerated track culminating in a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree within 5 years (See the MPH program catalog page for further information about this track).