Certificate in Consumer Health Advocacy

The Consumer Health Advocacy certificate program at the Center for Patient Partnerships educates a diversity of learners interested in health advocacy. Students around the country come to this interdisciplinary health advocacy center to learn critical health advocacy skills while helping patients navigate the complex health care system.

The Center for Patient Partnerships is a national resource for strengthening the consumer perspective in health care.We have graduate students from Law, Medicine, Pharmacy, Physician Assistant, Physical Therapy, Public Health, Social Work, Gender and Women's Studies, Engineering, and others participating in our certificate program.

Additional opportunities are available in patient experience research and organizational and legislative policy advocacy through student-led case to cause” projects.

Click on the Requirements tab on the right side navigation bar for general program requirements.

*The certificate requirements differ based on your discipline. Please [email protected] talk to an advisor.

Field Placements, Clerkships, Fellowships, and Individual Courses: detailed descriptions can be found in the documentUW Student opportunities. Please contact [email protected] or call 608-263-7736 for an advising session to get started.

1. Develop advocacy capacity that emphasizes patient empowerment.
2. Develop critical health advocacy competencies including communication, collaborative decision making, cultural humility, and ethics.
3. Experience the discipline of advocacy from a case-based perspective, and explore how various key advocacy roles can be useful in specific situations.
4. Gain familiarity with the U. S. health care delivery system and the systemic problems that give rise to the need for advocacy at the individual organizational and policy levels.

A bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited U.S. institution or a comparable degree from an international institution is required. International applicants must have a degree comparable to a regionally accredited U.S. bachelor’s degree. You must have completed your undergraduate degree, or similar, before starting graduate school.

A minimum undergraduate grade-point average (GPA) of 3.00 on the equivalent of the last 60 semester hours (approximately two years of work) or a master’s degree with a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.00 is required. Applicants from an international institution must demonstrate strong academic achievement comparable to a 3.00 for an undergraduate or master’s degree. The Graduate School will use your institution’s grading scale. Do not convert your grades to a 4.00 scale.

Every applicant whose native language is not English, or whose undergraduate instruction was not in English, must provide an English proficiency test score. TOEFL scores must be submitted electronically via ETS. IELTS scores can be submitted electronically or by paper.  Our office address is: UW-Madison Graduate School, Office of Admissions, 232 Bascom Hall, 500 Lincoln Drive, Madison, WI 53706.  Your score will not be accepted if it is more than two years old from the start of your admission term. Country of citizenship does not exempt applicants from this requirement. Language of instruction at the college or university level and how recent the language instruction was taken are the determining factors in meeting this requirement.

Applicants are exempt if: