The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school of Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. 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 then became the Harvard School of Public Health in 1922.
Health equity arises from access to the social determinants of health, specifically from wealth, power and prestige. Individuals who have consistently been deprived of these three determinants are significantly disadvantaged from health inequities, and face worse health outcomes than those who are able to access certain resources. It is not equity to simply provide every individual with the same resources; that would be equality. In order to achieve health equity, resources must be allocated based on an individual need-based principle.
While epidemiology is "the study of the distribution and determinants of states of health in populations", social epidemiology is "that branch of epidemiology concerned with the way that social structures, institutions, and relationships influence health." This research includes "both specific features of, and pathways by which, societal conditions affect health".
The Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health is the public health graduate school of Columbia University. Located on the Columbia University Irving Medical Center campus in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, the school is accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health.
Social Science & Medicine is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering social science research on health, including anthropology, economics, geography, psychology, social epidemiology, social policy, sociology, medicine and health care practice, policy, and organization. It was established in 1967 and is published by Elsevier.
Environmental social science is the broad, transdisciplinary study of interrelations between humans and the natural environment. Environmental social scientists work within and between the fields of anthropology, communication studies, economics, geography, history, political science, psychology, and sociology; and also in the interdisciplinary fields of environmental studies, human ecology and political ecology, social epidemiology, among others.
Ecosocial theory, first proposed by name in 1994 by Nancy Krieger of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is a broad and complex theory with the purpose of describing and explaining causal relationships in disease distribution. While it incorporates biological and psychosocial influences on disease occurrence, the theory is also suited to analyze the relationships between social factors and disease development in public health research. The core constructs of Ecosocial Theory are: Embodiment; Pathways to Embodiment; the cumulative interplay between exposure, resistance, and susceptibility; and agency and accountability. Further, the theory specifies that all constructs must be considered in concert, as they work together in a synergistic explanation of disease distribution. The theory assumes that distributions of disease are determined at multiple levels and that analyses must incorporate historical, political economic, temporal, and spatial analyses
Alfredo Morabia is a Swiss-American physician, epidemiologist, and historian of medicine. He is currently professor of epidemiology at the Barry Commoner Center for Health and the Environment at Queens College, City University of New York in addition to serving as professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the Department of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University.
Michelle Ann Williams is a Jamaican-American epidemiologist, public health scientist, and educator who has served as the dean of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health since 2016.
Simin Liu is an American physician researcher. He holds leadership positions internationally in the research of nutrition, genetics, epidemiology, and environmental and biological influences of complex diseases related to cardiometabolic health in diverse population. His research team has uncovered new mechanisms and risk-factors as well as developed research frameworks for diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Liu's laboratory conducts research mainly in the United States, though the group has had research collaborations, teaching, and service activities in six of the Seven Continents.
Ichiro Kawachi is a social epidemiologist of Japanese origin who was trained in New Zealand. He is currently the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Social Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health where he is also the chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Lisa Berkman is an American epidemiologist currently the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy, Epidemiology, and Global Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Tyler J. VanderWeele is the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also the co-director of Harvard University's Initiative on Health, Religion and Spirituality, the director of their Human Flourishing Program, and a faculty affiliate of the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University in mathematics, philosophy, theology, finance, and biostatistics.
Frederica Perera is an American environmental health scientist and the founder of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Her research career has focused on identifying and preventing harm to children from prenatal and early childhood exposure to environmental chemicals and pollutants. She is internationally recognized for pioneering the field of molecular epidemiology, incorporating molecular techniques into epidemiological studies to measure biologic doses, preclinical responses and susceptibility to toxic exposure.
Marc Lipsitch is an American epidemiologist and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he is the Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. He has worked on modeling the transmission of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Gina Danielle Schellenbaum Lovasi is the Interim Dean of the Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. She has authored more than 140 peer-reviewed articles and co-edited the book Urban Public Health: A Research Toolkit for Practice and Impact.
Sonia Hernández-Díaz is a Spanish-born American epidemiologist who is Professor of Epidemiology in the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. At the HUSPH, she is Director of the Pharmacoepidemiology program and assistant professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the evaluation of drug safety, especially during pregnancy. She has served as president of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology and the Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiologic Research, and is the chair of the Food and Drug Administration's Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she began researching the effects of COVID-19 on pregnant women and their fetuses.
Donna Spiegelman is a biostatistician and epidemiologist who works at the interface between the two fields as a methodologist, applying statistical solutions to address potential biases in epidemiologic studies.
Carolyn Cannuscio is an American epidemiologist who is an associate professor at the Perelman School of Medicine. She serves as Director of Research for the Center for Public Health Initiatives. Cannuscio works to improve public health with a specific focus on disadvantaged urban populations.
Francine Laden is an American epidemiologist who is Professor of Environmental Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her research has investigated the environmental epidemiology of chronic disease. She serves as co-director of the Harvard University and Boston University center for research on environmental and social stressors in housing across the life course. Laden has also served on the United States Environmental Protection Agency advisory board.
