Taking Public Health Learning Global through Branding and Identity Management

Abstract

“Pathways to Public Health” involves undergraduate and graduate degrees offered fully online through Kansas State University (K-State) to both meet the needs of traditional-age learners and professionals in the public health field who will need formal credentialing. This curriculum offers learning with global implications and has a wide potential to benefit global learners. In light of this, this chapter explores potential methods for online branding and identity management for this course series as a central analytical aspect of the program’s development and launch. This chapter will address the following issues: an environmental scan of the global public health environment; the definition of the core identity; a branding strategy using the World Wide Web (WWW), Internet, and Web 2.0 affordances (to reach both internal and external “publics”); an initial risk assessment; legal considerations; work implications of the global branding; the engagement of students and graduates in the branding outreach, and the maintenance of this brand over time.