The Advanced Practice Public Health Nursing (APPHN) specialty area provides a foundation for planning and evaluating community/public health programs; learning about community/public health concepts, health promotion, population-level interventions, grant writing, health care systems, leadership, and health policy; addressing health disparities of vulnerable and diverse populations; and practicing and consulting in diverse and multicultural settings. This is not a clinical specialty and involves no individual level patient care.
Advanced practice nurses in this specialty understand the complex interactions between health and the social determinants of health to maintain or improve the health of diverse, vulnerable, and underserved populations and communities. Practice settings include public health departments, schools and universities, parishes and faith-based programs, home care, rural health, refugee/immigrant clinics, primary care clinics, jails and prisons, ambulatory outpatient facilities, voluntary organizations, and a variety of community, public and private agencies and organizations.
The curriculum plan is available in the following PDF document:
- APPHN Curriculum: curr-apphn.pdf
Graduates are eligible to take the Advanced Public Health Nurse examination to earn the credential Advanced Public Health Nurse Board Certified (APPHN), a certification that is offered by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, and apply to the State of California Board of Registered Nursing for certification as a Clinical Nurse Specialist.
Note: This MS specialty area was previously known as Advanced Community Health and International Nursing (ACHIN).
Frequently Asked Questions
Each applicant is reviewed as a whole.
Goal statement, letters of reference, extracurricular activities, language skills, activities on-the-job, research activities, work experience, professional organization activities, and Grade Point Average (GPA) are ALL considered when the application is reviewed.
List all of these aspects.
Be sure to ask colleagues to review your goal statement. Include examples of on-the job activities. Describe any volunteer and professional activities. Make sure to ask your colleagues for "excellent" references and have them give specific reasons why they believe in your success.
Many of our students find that sharing housing is a good approach to solving both the availability and cost issues. Housing in the San Francisco Bay Area may be expensive, but help can be found with the campus Housing Office, the Student Affairs Office, and previous graduates can often give advice.
Masters Programs: An undergraduate GPA of 3.0 (on the 4.0 maximum scale) is expected for admission into the School of Nursing, although special circumstances can be discussed.
Doctoral Programs: an undergraduate Grade Point Average (GPA) of 3.2, and, if a graduate (master's) degree has been earned, a Grade Point Average of 3.5 is expected, verified by official transcripts.
Caution: transcripts from outside the USA require special handling.
Non-English transcripts or international transcripts (especially transcripts using different grading systems) should be submitted for translation and/or evaluation to a transcript evaluation agency.
The purpose of the evaluation is to verify that your degree/coursework is the equivalent to that of a US Bachelor or Master's degree.
Evaluation agencies provide a variety of services. Be sure to request an evaluation that provides the following:
- Lists all subjects/courses completed at the post-secondary level
- Provides a U.S. semester credit and grade equivalent for each course
- Provides a U.S. grade point average (GPA) for the Bachelor's degree or its equivalent on a 4.0 scale, and
- Designates the level (upper or lower) of each undergraduate course
Un-translated non-English transcripts will not be accepted.