24.7 Medicine at Yale: Wednesday: School of Public Health

Department of Epidemiology and Public Health research centers

Epidemiology and Public Health is headquartered on College Street, but the world is its laboratory. Its dean and chair, Michael Merson, M.D., former Executive Director of the World Health Organization Global Programme on AIDS, has brought an increasingly international outlook to public health studies. EPH faculty undertake exchanges and research in over fifteen countries, linking the school’s work to the WHO, the United Nations, the World Bank, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The newly created Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS coordinates eVorts to prevent HIV infection and mitigate the consequences of HIV disease in vulnerable and underserved populations in the United States and abroad.

Locally, EPH faculty have created an innovative research center with Griffin Hospital in Derby, Connecticut, with support from the CDC, to evaluate health promotion and disease prevention efforts tailored to the needs of communities in the lower Naugatuck River Valley. What unifies these and many other international, national, and local efforts at Epidemiology and Public Health is Merson’s rallying cry, “Prevention is still better than any cure.”

Founded in 1915, Yale’s School of Public Health is one of the oldest nationally accredited public health schools in the country and one of only a few that are part of a medical school. The school has an extensive faculty with diverse interests, divided among six academic divisions: Biostatistics, Chronic Disease Epidemiology, Environmental Health Sciences, Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Health Policy and Administration, and International Health.

The school’s two-year Master of Public Health program consists of a rigorous core curriculum that includes a community project, a summer internship, and a thesis. Joint degree programs are offered with the Yale schools of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Management, Medicine, and Nursing, and with the Center for International and Area Studies in the Graduate School. EPH also offers studies toward a doctorate of philosophy through the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Dean Michael Merson, School of Public Health.

Michael Merson has served as dean of the School of Public Health since 1995.

At the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, Dean Merson discusses the design of a study with associate research scientist Kim Blankenship.

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Last modified: Wednesday, 11-Aug-2004 15:00:50 EDT. (PL)