The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (formerly Harvard School of Public Health) is the public health graduate school of Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts adjacent Harvard Medical School. The Chan School is considered a preeminent school of public health in the United States. The school grew out of the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers, the nation's first graduate training program in population health, which was founded in 1913 and became the Harvard School of Public Health in 1922. Michelle Williams, faculty and chair of the school's Department of Epidemiology, became the school's dean in July 2016, following the departure of former dean Julio Frenk and interim service of acting dean David Hunter. She then became the first African American individual to head a Harvard faculty.
As of 2015, the school is ranked second in the nation (after the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and tied with UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health) in the U.S. News & World Report. U.S. News consistently ranks Harvard #1 in Health Policy and Management.
History
The School traces its origins to the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers, founded in 1913; Harvard calls it "the nation's first graduate training program in public health." In 1922, the School for Health Officers became the Harvard School of Public Health, and in 1946 it was split off from the medical school and became a separate faculty of Harvard University. It was renamed the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2014 after receiving a $350 million donation, the largest gift in Harvard's history at the time, from the Morningside Foundation. The Morningside Foundation is headed by Harvard School of Public Health alumnus Dr. Gerald Chan, SM '75, SD '79, the son of T.H. Chan, and younger brother of Ronnie Chan who runs Hang Lung Group.
Curriculum
The Master of Public Health Program (MPH) offers eight degree fields of study:
- Clinical Effectiveness (CLE)
- Epidemiology (EPI)
- Health and Social Behavior (HSB)
- Health Policy (HP)
- Health Management (HM)
- Global Health (GH)
- Occupational and Environmental Health (OEH)
- Quantitative Methods (QM)
Degree programs offered by specific departments:
- Biostatistics: ScM, PhD
- Environmental Health (EH): ScM, PhD, ScD, MOH (Master of Occupational Health), DPH
- Epidemiology (EPI): ScM, ScD, DPH
- Genetics and Complex Diseases: PhD
- Health Policy and Management: ScM, ScD, PhD
- Health Care Management: ScM
- Immunology and Infectious Diseases: ScD, PhD
- Nutrition (NUT): ScD, DPH, PhD
- Global Health and Population (since 2009, formerly Population and International Health) (GHP):
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- Health Economics (ScD)
- Health Systems (ScD)
- Population and Reproductive Health (ScD)
- Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS): ScM, ScD, DPH
- Population Health Sciences (Interdisciplinary PhD within departments of EH, EPI, GHP, NUT, and SBS)
The Harvard Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) was launched in 2014 as a multidisciplinary degree providing advanced education in public health along with mastery of skills in management, leadership, communications, and innovation thinking. The program is a cohort-based program emphasizing small-group learning and collaboration. The program is designed for three years â€" two years at Harvard, plus one year in a field-based doctoral project â€" although some students may take up to four years to complete the program. Academic training in the DrPH covers the biological, social, and economic foundations of public health, as well as essential statistical, quantitative, and methodological skills in the first year, an individualized course of study in your second year, and a field-based, capstone project called the DELTA (Doctoral Engagement in Leadership and Translation for Action) in the final year(s) of the program.
PhD programs are offered under the aegis of the Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Research projects
- The Nurses Health Study and Nurses Health Study II, which have followed the health of over 100,000 nurses from 1976 to the present; its results have been used in hundreds of published papers.
- The Health Professionals Followup Study, a similar study of over fifty thousand male health professionals seeking to connect diet, exercise, smoking, and medications taken to frequency of cancer and cardiovascular disease.
- The International Health Systems Program, which has provided training or technical assistance to projects in 21 countries, and conducts health policy research
- The Program in Health Care Financing, which studies the economics of national health care programs; evaluates the health care programs of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other countries; studies the effects of bringing HMO-like hospital reimbursement practices to developing countries; and applies hedonimetrics to health care.
- The Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research (HPCR), which studies public health and humanitarian law and policy in the context of conflict-torn regions like the Gaza Strip and transnational issues like terrorism.
- The Lung Cancer S.O.S. study, examining the risk factors for and prognosis of lung cancer in terms of genetics and environment.
- The College Alcohol Study, which examines the causes of college binge drinking and approaches to prevention and harm reduction.
- The Program on the Global Demography of Aging, which studies policy issues related to economics of aging with a focus on the developing world.
- The Superfund Basic Research Program (see Superfund), studying toxic waste management.
- The Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness, to "help identify how positive aspects of living can lead to better health and a longer life" and "coordinate research across many disciplines at Harvard University" and "understanding the complex interplay between positive psychological well-being and human health."
Notable faculty (and past faculty)
- Curtis Huttenhower, computational biologist
- Frank Hu, epidemiologist and nutrition researcher
- Katherine Baicker, economist, a former member of the Council of Economic Advisers
- Robert Blendon, political strategy of health and public opinion expert
- Barry Bloom, immunologist and former dean
- David Bloom, economist
- David Canning, economist
- Arnold Epstein, department chair for health policy and management
- Francesca Dominici senior associate dean for research, professor of biostatistics, data scientist, and air pollution expert
- Max Essex, HIV researcher
- Julio Frenk, former dean of school of public health and former Secretary of Health of Mexico
- Atul Gawande, general and endocrine surgeon
- Sue Goldie, physician and decision scientist, Macarthur fellowship recipient
- John Graham, policy and decision scientist, former director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
- Laurie Glimcher, immunologist
- Alice Hamilton, occupational health and toxicology; first woman appointed to the faculty of Harvard University
- David Hemenway, economist and injury prevention expert
- William Hsiao, economist
- David Hunter, epidemiologist, Acting Dean of the Faculty and former Dean for Academic Affairs at School of Public Health
- Ichiro Kawachi, social epidemiologist
- Howard Koh, public health researcher, the 14th Assistant Secretary for Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
- Nan Laird, biostatistician, former head of department
- Alexander H. Leighton, psychiatric epidemiologist
- Richard Levins, ecologist and mathematical biologist
- Jun S. Liu, biostatistician and mathematician, 2002 COPPS presidents' award recipient
- Xihong Lin, biostatistician and mathematician, 2006 COPPS presidents' award recipient
- Bernard Lown, co-founded the Nobel Prize-winning group Physicians for Social Responsibility; founder of the Lown Cardiovascular Research Foundation
- Adetokunbo Lucas, former director of Tropical Diseases Research at the World Health Organization (WHO)
- Brian MacMahon, cancer epidemiologist
- Sezan Mahmud, Writer and university professor
- Christopher Murray, physician and health economist
- Joseph Newhouse, economist and director of the RAND Health Insurance Experiment
- Shuji Ogino, pioneer in molecular pathological epidemiology
- James Robins, epidemiologist and biostatistician
- Pardis Sabeti, computational biologist, medical geneticist and evolutionary geneticist
- Amartya Sen, economist, Nobel laureate in Economics
- Andrew Spielman, public health entomologist
- Frederick J. Stare, controversial chair of Nutrition Institute
- James H. Ware, biostatistician
- Thomas Weller, Nobel laureate in Physiology and Medicine
- George C. Whipple, cofounder of School in 1922
- Walter Willett, physician and nutrition researcher
Notable alumni
- Anthony Irvine Adams, 2001 Alumni Award of Merit for a distinguished service in public health practice
- James B. Aguayo-Martel, pioneer in ophthalmology
- Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Prime Minister of Norway, former Director-General of the World Health Organization
- Eli Capilouto, provost of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and incoming president of the University of Kentucky
- William Foege, MPH 1965, physician, former director of the Centers for Disease Control
- Humayun Chaudhry, President and CEO of the Federation of State Medical Boards
- Winston Dang, head of Taiwan's Environmental Protection Administration from 2004 to 2008
- Jonathan Fielding, Director Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, editor Annual Review of Public Health
- Janina R. Galler, PI and Director of 45+-year Barbados Nutrition Study in the Lesser Antilles, in the Americas, a longitudinal study showING the intergenerational legacy of poverty and disadvantage that result from childhood malnutrition.
- Steven K. Galson, former Acting Surgeon General of the United States
- Atul Gawande, surgical safety pioneer, MacArthur Fellow, Rhodes Scholar
- Sue Goldie, MacArthur Fellow and decision scientist
- Timothy Johnson, chief medical correspondent for ABC News
- Karl Lauterbach, German Politician (SPD)
- John S. Marr, MD, MPH, epidemiologist and author.
- Jonathan Mann, former head of the World Health Organization global HIV/AIDS program
- James O. Mason, former Acting Surgeon-General of the USA, former Director of the CDC
- Shuji Ogino, pioneer in molecular pathological epidemiology
- Hrishikesh Polisetti, MPH 1960, former Director of Medical and Health Services, Government of Andhra Pradesh, India
- Endang Rahayu Sedyaningsih, former Minister of Health of Indonesia
- David J. Sencer, longest-serving Director of the CDC
See also
- Hang Lung Group
References
External links
- Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Website
- Professor Andrew Speilman, Professor Tropical Public Health, Harvard School of Public Health Freeview Issues programme on Malaria by the Vega Science Trust.
Centers and Institutes
- Jay Winsten Center for Health Communication
- François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights
- Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention
- Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies
- Harvard Injury Control Research Center
- Harvard School of Public Health AIDS Initiative (HSPH HAI)
- Cyprus International Institute for Environmental and Public Health
- John B. Little Center for Radiation Sciences
