How ASU's College of Health Solutions Prepares Students for Health Careers

The College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University prepares students for health careers by combining an educational and practical foundation with hands-on training built into coursework. Beyond the classroom, students can take part in community projects, research, internships, and student clubs. The college's stated aim is to prepare graduates for the broad world of health care — whether they treat patients, conduct research, or work in administrative and other support roles. This page is most useful if you want to understand the college's overall approach and the range of health fields it covers; for admission requirements, tuition, or specific degree plans, you would need to check the individual program pages.

The college's approach to health careers

The College of Health Solutions frames health more broadly than direct patient care. Its materials note that doctors and nurses are essential for healing wounds and treating diseases, but that people also turn to professionals such as personal trainers, physical therapists, dietitians, speech and occupational therapists, social workers, and counselors to optimize their health. Behind the scenes, the college adds, health care also needs administrators, statisticians, researchers, and software developers.

That framing shapes how the college describes its role: providing the educational and practical foundation students need to work across this "vast and expanding world of health care," in patient-facing, research, administrative, or support roles.

Areas of study across three schools

The college is organized into three schools, and its "I'm interested in" section maps interests to fields of study:

Each area is described on the site in terms of what it involves — for example, using data to improve health (biomedical informatics), the systems and processes involved in providing health care (health care systems), working with patients to improve health and manage disease (health sciences and medical studies), helping people get in shape and improve their mobility (exercise and movement sciences), the impact of food on the human body (nutrition), reducing health disparities among groups of people (population health), and helping people communicate better (speech and hearing science).

Practical experience and student support

The college states that employers want to hire graduates with practical experience, and that your coursework will include hands-on training. It lists several ways to gain experience and support alongside your classes:

• Community projects — applied work outside the classroom
• Research — participation in research activity
• Internships — workplace experience before graduation
• Student clubs — extracurricular involvement
• Student advising — advisors help you choose classes whether you already know what you want to do or are still figuring it out

The advising point matters if you are undecided: the college presents advising as a resource for both students with a clear career target and those still exploring.

What this means for choosing a path

If your goal is a patient-facing clinical career, the college's clinical health sciences areas (such as health sciences and medical studies, or speech and hearing science) are the closest match. If you are more interested in data, systems, or population-level work, biomedical informatics, health care systems, and population health sit in the School of Health Systems Transformation. If your interest is performance, movement, or food and the body, exercise and movement sciences and nutrition are grouped under the School of Human Performance and Lifespan Health.

The common thread across all of them, per the college, is the combination of classroom education with hands-on training and out-of-class experience — the "competitive advantage" it says employers look for. To decide, compare the specific program pages for the area you're considering, since those will carry the details on coursework and requirements that this overview does not.