UMass Global faculty member Dania Baba adds professional perspective to healthcare administration programs

IRVINE, Calif. (Oct. 11, 2022) – Sooner or later, just about everyone needs to go to the hospital in search of care for themselves or a loved one. At University of Massachusetts Global, Dania Baba, assistant professor of healthcare administration, is playing a major role in designing courses preparing a new wave of professionals for the critical task of making sure hospitals and other medical facilities are well-managed.

Effective health systems are important even to the many people who aren’t seeking care at a given time. After all, healthy individuals create healthy and productive communities.

“At the community level, everything starts with good health,” said Baba, who is also engaged in teaching a graduate-level course titled Foundations of Healthcare Administration.

For UMass Global, Baba approaches healthcare administration from a practitioner’s perspective. While redesigning the Graduate Certificate in Health Administration, an online program featuring coursework in healthcare law and ethics, analytics, the economics of healthcare, and the promotion of quality and safety, she sought to design courses that would be beneficial for students who already have experience in healthcare management, as well as others who may be brand new to the field.

Baba wants students who complete the program to enhance their critical thinking and problem-solving skills alongside the ability to communicate effectively with all members of a healthcare organization, from frontline workers to executives. A student who successfully completes the program would possess a certificate attesting to their better understanding of how to work in dynamic healthcare settings.

“Healthcare is advancing at a very fast pace,” Baba said. “Every day there is some new thing … it’s not like a lab where you can follow a procedure.”

Baba also developed a Healthcare Administration Emphasis within the university’s Bachelor of Business Administration program. Undergraduate students interested in a healthcare management degree would be able to select a suite of elective courses to be taken in addition to core business courses.

The Healthcare Administration Emphasis, as designed by Baba with support from others, is scheduled to be available to students when Spring Session I begins in January, said Glenn Worthington, dean of the School of Business and Professional Studies. Baba is also helping UMass Global develop a Master of Healthcare Administration degree. Approvals from the U.S. Department of Education and its accreditor, the WASC Senior College and University Commission, are still pending.

“Dr. Baba’s many years of experience as a healthcare management executive in a large medical center enabled her to create meaningful, relevant programs of study for our students,” Worthington said. “We are fortunate to have her at the helm of our healthcare administration programs at the graduate and undergraduate levels.”

Baba joined the School of Business and Professional Studies’ full-time faculty in 2019 after spending about 25 years overseas as a professional hospital leader at American University of Beirut Medical Center. She served as the hospital’s chief operating officer from 2011 through 2015 and as its chief planning and transition officer until mid-2018. Baba has also worked in California as a hospital consultant.