Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
	Coat of arms of the School
Former names	Harvard School of Public Health
Established	1913
Type	Graduate school; School of Public Health
Parent institution	Harvard University
Location	Boston, Massachusetts, United States; Coordinates: 42°20′07″N 71°06′10″W / 42.335390°N 71.102793°W
Dean	Michelle Williams
Academic staff	480
Students	1,140
Doctoral students	474
Alumni	11,060
Website	hsph.harvard.edu

HSPH Courtyard Entrance from Harvard Medical School

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,^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5] 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.^[6] She then became the first African American individual to head a Harvard faculty.^[7]

As of 2015, the school is ranked as one of the best in the nation (with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Washington School of Public Health and UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health) in the U.S. News & World Report.^[8] U.S. News consistently ranks Harvard #1 in Health Policy and Management.^[9]

History[edit]

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.^[10] 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.^[11] The Morningside Foundation is headed by Harvard School of Public Health alumnus Gerald Chan, SM '75, SD '79, the son of T.H. Chan^[12], and younger brother of Ronnie Chan who runs Hang Lung Group.^[13]

Curriculum[edit]

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)^[14]

HSPH participates in the Harvard Graduate Council (HGC), a university-wide student government

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):

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 – two years at Harvard, plus one year in a field-based doctoral project – 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.^[15]

PhD programs are offered under the aegis of the Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Research projects[edit]

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.^[16]
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.^[17]
The International Health Systems Program, which has provided training or technical assistance to projects in 21 countries, and conducts health policy research^[18]
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.^[19]
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.^[20]
The Lung Cancer S.O.S. study, examining the risk factors for and prognosis of lung cancer in terms of genetics and environment.^[21]
The College Alcohol Study, which examines the causes of college binge drinking and approaches to prevention and harm reduction.^[22]
The Program on the Global Demography of Aging, which studies policy issues related to economics of aging with a focus on the developing world.^[23]
The Superfund Basic Research Program (see Superfund), studying toxic waste management.^[24]
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"^[25] and "coordinate research across many disciplines at Harvard University" and "understanding the complex interplay between positive psychological well-being and human health."^[26]^[27]^[28]^[29]^[30]^[31]

Notable faculty (and past faculty)[edit]

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^[32]
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^[33]
Walter Willett, physician and nutrition researcher