Project Management Training in Australian Public Health Degrees: A Curriculum Mapping Study

Project management-related capability is increasingly recognised as relevant to contemporary public health practice, yet little is known about how these competencies are embedded within formal public health education. This study provides the first national, credit-weighted curriculum mapping of project management-relevant content across Australian Bachelor and Master of Public Health programs. Seventeen degrees across ten leading universities were analysed using a cross-sectional design modelled on prior U.S. research and adapted to the Australian context. Units were classified according to a structured relevance framework (0-100%) and weighted by total program credit requirements to calculate maximum potential exposure to project management-related content. Findings reveal substantial variation in both the extent and structure of project management integration. At the postgraduate level, maximum exposure ranged from 7.81% to 66.67% of total program credit points, while undergraduate programs ranged from 18.75% to 54.23%. In most institutions, project management-related competencies were embedded within electives, capstones, or adjacent domains such as implementation science and evaluation, rather than positioned as compulsory, explicitly named components. Only a small group of universities demonstrated coherent, longitudinal integration across core curricula. These findings suggest variation in the visibility and positioning of project management capability within public health education and raise questions about how such competencies are developed in practice. By making these patterns visible, this study contributes empirical insight to discussions on workforce capability, institutional priorities, sustainability, and the evolving role of project-based approaches in public health systems.