About the PPHTC

The Pacific Public Health Training Center (PPHTC) is a combined effort of the four accredited Schools of Public Health in California and the University of Hawaii’s School of Nursing and Dental Hygiene. The Center’s goal is to develop and support public health training opportunities that are consistent with Healthy People 2010 objectives.
MISSION
Our mission is to develop and maintain a skilled public health workforce in California, Hawaii and the US Associated Pacific Islands in order to support and enhance individual and community health. We collaborate with strategic partners to provide training that is innovative, effective, flexible in methodology, and accessible to our constituents.
PPHTC MANAGING PARTNERS

John Casken, RN MPH PhD

John Casken is an Associate Professor at the School of Nursing and Dental Hygiene at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. He also serves as the Director of the Office of International Affairs for the School. His prime area of research is indigenous health issues, especially Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders. He is a member of the School’s Quentin Burdick Interdisciplinary Rural Health Training Team.

John has been a member of the Management Committee of the Pacific Public Health Training Center since its inception in 2000. A major initiative for the PPHTC was working with public health nurses on all the islands of the state to present nurse training on environmental factors related to health promotion as well health care policy and PH nursing. Dr. Casken also led training for the nurses on public health competencies. For a number of years, he has been working with colleagues in Hawaii and the U.S. mainland on disaster preparedness including biological events both natural and manmade. There has also been an increasing linkage in this area with colleagues overseas.
Dr. Casken teaches graduate classes in fiscal management and health policy issues and undergraduate classes in health management for nursing and dental hygiene students. Current initiatives include setting up a joint MSN/MBA with universities in Thailand. He is also spearheading a program to set up a program in Vietnam that would assist Vietnamese nursing students in obtaining a bachelor’s degree in nursing while living and studying in Vietnam.

David Dyjack, DrPH CIH

Dave Dyjack is a Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health, Dean for Public Health Practice, and Dean of the Loma Linda University School of Public Health. He received a doctorate in Public Health from the University of Michigan, an MSPH in Industrial Hygiene from the University of Utah, and is a board certified industrial hygienist. Dave has worked for, or consulted for, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Health Resources ands Services Administration, the World Health Organization, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, among others.

Dr. Dyjack received the 2006 School of Public Health excellence in research award and is Principal Investigator for his University’s NCEH designated Regional Academic Center of Excellence in Environmental Public Health and Center for Pubic Health Preparedness.
 

Jeffrey S. Oxendine, MPH MBA

Jeff Oxendine is Associate Dean for Public Health Practice, at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. He is also a Lecturer and Field Supervisor with the Health Policy and Management Program, and has been an executive, educator and consultant in healthcare for 23 years.

Prior to joining UC Berkeley, Jeff held senior administrative positions in leading hospitals and medical groups including Partners Healthcare System, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Bay Imaging Consultants Medical Group and Alta Bates Medical Center. He also started and operates his own consulting practice. Mr. Oxendine holds faculty appointments at the UC Berkeley and Harvard Schools of Public Health, where he teaches healthcare strategy and organization, leadership, practicum, and a capstone seminar.
Jeff is Founder and President of Health Career Connection, a non-profit that assists undergraduate students to discover and pursue health careers. He also founded the Healthcare Change Institute, which is devoted to assisting practitioners to more effectively implement organizational change.
Mr. Oxendine obtained his masters degrees in Business and Public Health from UC Berkeley. He has served as President of the Berkeley Health Management Alumni Association and President of Healthcare Executives of Northern California. Jeff is a board member of the Kaiser Permanente National Institute for Culturally Competent Care and also the Community Health Academy in Oakland. He is an advisory board member of the UCSF Center for Health Professions Grant “LEADing Organizational Change: Advancing Quality Through Culturally Responsive Care,” and a steering committee member of the Alameda County Coalition on Language Access in Healthcare.

Michael L. Prelip, MPH DPA CHES
Project Principal Investigator

Mike Prelip is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the UCLA School of Public Health, where his primarily responsibilities are teaching in the graduate program and continuing education for public health professionals. He is responsible for supervising the field component of the Master of Public Health (MPH) degree.

Additionally he teaches courses in community based program planning, research and evaluation; fund development; community organization; and leadership and empowerment. Mike is the principal investigator of the Pacific Public Health Training Center, a collaboration of the Schools of Public Health of San Diego State University, UC Berkeley, Loma Linda University, and the University of Hawaii. This nationally funded training center focuses on developing capacity among current public health professionals.
Dr. Prelip is currently involved in a number of research projects, which are all community based public health focused, using a community participatory model. These include projects working with local school districts to develop a process to improve the school and community environment to be more “nutrition friendly; and to development evaluation methods to assess impact of school based nutrition education programs. He is also involved in the development and evaluation of worksite wellness programs for school personnel. Mike also works on several communication projects focusing on a number of health topics, including fetal alcohol syndrome prevention and immunizations.
Prior to coming to UCLA, Dr. Prelip worked 15 years in community-based nonprofit organizations. During that time, he was actively involved in grant development, program planning, and evaluation. He developed both community- and clinic-based projects focusing on reproductive health, substance use prevention, primary care, TB treatment and immunizations. He continues to have a strong interest in working with community based organizations through his volunteer work. Currently, Mike is the vice-chair of the Board of Directors of Watts HealthCare, one of the largest non profit health clinic in California.

Robert L. Seidman, PhD

Rob Seidman serves as the Associate Director of the Graduate School of Public Health at San Diego State University. He is also an Associate Professor in the Health Services Administration Division of the Graduate School of Public Health.

Prior to joining the SDSU faculty, Dr. Seidman was an economist with the Office of Research, Health Care Financing Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He spent two years as a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at the School of Hygiene and Public Health, John Hopkins University and was Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Health Economics, University of York (England).
His scholarly interests and research focuses on public health workforce training and development, health information technology, health data analysis, and economic aspects of hospital and physician reimbursement and performance. Dr. Seidman has been the Principal Investigator and Director on a number of federally funded projects. He teaches graduate classes in Health Economics, Public Issues in Financing Health Care, and Quantitative Methods and Data Analysis.
ADVISORY COUNCIL

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