Challenge your understanding of complex healthcare issues, then put your knowledge into practice in the real-world
The Health Care Strategy Consulting Practicum is a 16-week, online course where students turn classroom knowledge into actionable solutions for real-world challenges. Through collaborative project engagements with businesses and nonprofit organizations, students address existing and emerging challenges, identifying opportunities to make a meaningful impact in the healthcare space. This course is open to part-time Master of Science in Health Care Management students and MBA students pursuing a pathway in healthcare, bringing together valuable perspectives to the team.
Partner with real businesses on cutting-edge challenges
Leveraging the close ties to the Johns Hopkins Hospital system and external healthcare partners, students tackle project challenges designed to provide a space for students to work closely with a client partner and develop lasting solutions. Past projects have included advancing geriatric care, developing a strategic plan for health education for women in the city of Baltimore, and creating a market strategy for an innovative triage headset that relays real-time vitals to medical professionals off-site.
Students apply marketing, operations, organizational management, feasibility, and competitor analysis skills to address the client’s challenges in the healthcare industry.
Read more about the Health Care Strategy Consulting Practicum
Some of our past partners include:
- Helping UP Mission
- Hope Diagnostics
- Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health
- Johns Hopkins Community Health
- Johns Hopkins Women’s Wellness & Healthy Aging Program
- MD AirSupport
- Population Health at Howard County General Hospital
- Protenus
- The Rales Center
- Trusted Hearts
- Xpert Care
”This program helped us dig into specific business scenarios that our team did not have the time or capacity to invest in. This resulted in us receiving relevant business insight beyond our own planned capacity."
SCEO and Co-founder
Protenus
”We had the pleasure of working with two teams from the Health Care Strategy course. The teams identified ways to support the long-term sustainability of our school-based healthcare program and potential new streams of funding that we hadn’t considered before. The students’ experience and expertise in a broad range of health and healthcare fields made this a great opportunity for us."
Director, Rales Center for the Integration of Health and Education
Learn from an experienced industry faculty member
Senior Lecturer Dr. Bonnie Robeson developed this signature experiential learning course for the part-time Health Care Management program in 2019. Offered every fall and spring semester, this course draws on Dr. Robeson’s extensive experience across the healthcare industry and her years of directing experiential learning projects in the United States and India. Dr. Robeson guides students through this two-part course, preparing them with the skills needed for consulting in healthcare.
”The Health Care Strategy Consulting Practicum course is an opportunity for students to learn the process of implementing a strategic approach to an organization’s issue. This course has multiple levels of learning which includes the team collaborative process, formulating recommendations in an unfamiliar area often with ambiguity, applying business tools to the client’s challenges, and developing and practicing the skill of probing the client effectively to obtain the necessary understanding for providing realistic and achievable recommendations. Content and skills learned in this course are applicable to anyone interested in the healthcare industry. The projects, all relating to a healthcare area, have included feasibility and competitive analysis, growth strategies, management organizational recommendations, pricing models, and identifying marketing channels and strategies. Students complete the two-part course with a sense of accomplishment and increased confidence in their abilities to apply the knowledge gained throughout their programs in a work environment."
This 16-week course is divided into two eight-week sessions: a consulting primer and your real-world challenge.
Session 1: Consulting primer
- The first eight weeks provide a deep dive into healthcare consulting work to prepare you for your challenge.
Session 2: Real-world challenge
- During the second eight weeks, apply classroom theories to a real-world challenge. Through an intentional teaming process, you’ll be grouped with three to five students and paired with a challenge sourced by our Office of Experiential Learning and course faculty.
You’ll leave this course with consulting knowledge and experience of consulting in the healthcare industry
Over the duration of the course, students will
- Analyze data to form creative and manageable solutions to complex, unstructured situations
- Link theory to practice by applying tools to problem-solving situations
- Apply leadership skills to teamwork, knowing when to lead and when to follow
- Learn about and synthesize strategic concepts
- Deliver recommendations to project sponsor
- Gain exposure to real-world challenges and healthcare organizations
”This class was one of my favorites at Carey because it allowed me to use everything I’ve learned in the program to make a difference for a client and their patients. From business communications and statistics and leadership, to strategy, financial analysis, and marketing, this class was the perfect culminating experience in the MBA program."
”This course provided me with the necessary insight and experience to further my career capabilities and allowed me to recognize my worth and value as a new budding consultant. I look forward to using this new knowledge to help evolve my career down a path that I honestly would not have known to be available to me."
