University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health

Last updated
University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health
Type Public
Established1948
Dean Maureen Lichtveld
Academic staff
160 primary, 400 total
Administrative staff
520
Postgraduates 484
Location
Pittsburgh
,
Pennsylvania
,
US
CampusOakland (Pittsburgh)
Website www.publichealth.pitt.edu

The School of Public Health (sometimes shortened to Pitt Public Health) is one of 17 schools at the University of Pittsburgh. The school, founded in 1948, was first led by Thomas Parran, surgeon general of the U.S. Public Health Service. [1] It is ranked as the 13th best public health school in the United States by U.S. News & World Report . [2] In addition, it is ranked third among public health schools for funding received from the National Institutes of Health. [3] It was the first of only two fully accredited schools of public health in Pennsylvania (the other being Drexel University's School of Public Health in Philadelphia). The school offers a Bachelor's of Science in Public Health (BSPH), Masters of Public Health (MPH), Master of Science (MS), Master of Health Administration, and doctoral degrees (PhD, DrPH) in areas such as behavioral and community health sciences, biostatistics, environmental and occupational health, epidemiology, health policy and management, human genetics, and infectious disease and microbiology. [4] [5]

Contents

History

A desire by Pittsburgh residents to better understand the health risks from pollution released from the city's many steel mills in the early 20th century led to the creation of Pitt's School of Public Health in 1948 with a $13.6 million grant from the A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust. [6] Originating in the renovated former Municipal Hospital, now Salk Hall, the school was accredited on April 6, 1950, and admitted its first class of 29 full-time and 5 part-time students in September 1950. [7] The school moved into a new facility, now named Parran Hall, completed for it in 1957. [8] The school's first dean, Thomas Parran, had previously founded the World Health Organization and served for twelve years as Surgeon General of the United States. Parran guided the early development of the school and recruited many of its prominent early faculty. An early focus of the school was occupational and industrial health and hygiene in the steel mills of Pittsburgh. These studies, and Pitt Public Health investigations of black lung among coal miners, strongly influenced the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 which, based mostly on school generated data, created the first national standards for on-the-job worker safety and health. [9] Although the scope of the school has greatly broadened, this theme of research has continued throughout the years with significant implications including, among other things, information on the hazards of asbestos. Pitt Public Health has become one of the top schools for sponsored research funding. It has also pioneered research directions: it the first school of public health to have a department of human genetics; it had the first and only public health school chair in minority health; and played a critical role in understanding diseases such as AIDS for which it initiated the longest-running national study of the natural history of the disease. [10] It continues to maintain strong relationships with regional and national government agencies such as the Allegheny County Health Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and has produced over 5,000 alumni in its 60 years of history. [11]

On July 1, 2019, the school's longest-serving dean, Donald S. Burke, MD, stepped down and A. Everette James became interim dean. In January 2021, Maureen Lichtveld, MPH, MD, became the school's dean.

Interdisciplinary themes

The Pitt Public Health ranks among the top five public health schools in the United States, measured by National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. Since 2000, it has won more than $1 billion in NIH funding for research and service in the following areas:

Departments

The home of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (Pitt Public Health). ParranHall2014.jpg
The home of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health (Pitt Public Health).

Centers and institutes

Pitt Public Health is responsible for or participates in the operation a variety of different public health centers and institutes including:

Related Research Articles

The Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) is a 501(c)(6) non-profit organization originally organized in 1955, founded in 1992, and based in Atlanta, Georgia. CSTE works to advance public health policy and workforce capacity for applied public health epidemiologists in all localities, states, and territories in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health</span> Public health institution

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.

The College of Public Health (CPH) is a college within the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, Georgia, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Minnesota School of Public Health</span>

The University of Minnesota School of Public Health (SPH) is located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a politically and socially progressive city, and it is fully accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health. In 2022, the school enrolled more than 1,000 students from 48 different countries. Its 123 full-time faculty members manage the #3 most highly funded research portfolio at the University of Minnesota. Within 12 months of graduation, 99% of the school’s students are employed in their fields.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UCLA Fielding School of Public Health</span> Public health school at the University of California, Los Angeles

The UCLA Jonathan and Karin Fielding School of Public Health is the graduate school of public health at UCLA, and is located within the Center for Health Sciences building on UCLA's campus in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The UCLA Fielding School of Public Health has 690 students representing 25 countries, more than 11,000 alumni and 247 faculty, 70 of whom are full-time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parran Hall</span>

Opened in 1984, the University of South Florida College of Public Health, offers master's degrees in Public Health (MPH), a Master of Science in Public Health (MSPH) which is a more academic and research oriented master's degree, and a master's degree in Health Administration (MHA), along with a doctorate (PhD) in Public Health and several dual degrees in collaboration with other colleges- most notably the dual PhD/MPH program in Applied Anthropology. The MHA in Public Health Practice is an innovative program for health professionals which can be attained through weekend executive or distance learning format.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions</span> Academic college of the University of Florida

The College of Public Health and Health Profession is the school of public health and other health professions of the University of Florida. The college was established by the Florida Board of Regents in 1958 as a separate school within the J. Hillis Miller Health Science Center and is a member of the ASPH and CEPH. The college's mission is to "preserve, promote, and improve the health and well-being of populations, communities and individuals." The college grants bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine</span>

The Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine is part of Tulane University, located in New Orleans, in the U.S. state of Louisiana.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drexel University School of Public Health</span> Public University in Pennsylvania

The Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health is a part of the Drexel University Health Sciences network of schools. The Dornsife School of Public Health was located in downtown Philadelphia from its inception until December 2013. It has since re-located to the University City Campus.

The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) is a center within the University of Minnesota that focuses on addressing public health preparedness and emerging infectious disease response. It was founded in 2001 by Dr. Michael Osterholm, in order to "prevent illness and death from infectious diseases through epidemiological research and rapid translation of scientific information into real-world practical applications and solutions". It is not part of the Center for Disease Control or National Institute of Health.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy</span> Graduate school in New York City

The CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy is a public American research and professional college within the borders of City University of New York (CUNY) system of colleges. The school is situated at 55 West 125th Street in Manhattan. CUNY SPH offers doctoral programs, master's programs, several certificates, and faculty memberships in many of CUNY's research centers and institutes. A core roster of over 50 full-time faculty is supplemented by additional faculty members drawn from throughout CUNY.

Makerere University School of Public Health (MUSPH) is one of the schools that comprise the Makerere University College of Health Sciences, a constituent college of Makerere University, Uganda's oldest and largest public university.

The University of Maryland School of Public Health is located in College Park, Maryland. U.S. News & World Report ranked the school 28th among all schools and programs of public health in 2023. It contains the departments of Department of Behavioral and Community Health, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Department of Family Science, Department of Health Policy and Management, Department of Kinesiology and Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health. It also includes the Herschel S. Horowitz Center for Health Literacy, the nation's first academic center focused on improving health literacy, the Maryland Center for Health Equity, which focuses on eliminating racial and ethnic health disparities, and the Prevention Research Center, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-funded center focused on improving mental health and eliminating health disparities and related social injustices experienced by LGBTQ+ persons.

Donald S. Burke is an expert on the prevention, diagnosis, and control of infectious diseases of global concern. He is a distinguished University Professor of Health Science and Policy at the University of Pittsburgh.

The Hudson College of Public Health is one of the seven colleges of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center--the health sciences branch of the University of Oklahoma.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caitlin Rivers</span> American emerging infectious disease epidemiologist

Caitlin M. Rivers is an American epidemiologist who as Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, specializing on improving epidemic preparedness. Rivers is currently working on the American response to the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on the incorporation of infectious disease modeling and forecasting into public health decision making.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marc Lipsitch</span> American epidemiologist

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).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brown University School of Public Health</span>

Rebecca Allana Hubbard is an American biostatistician whose research interests include observational studies and the use of electronic health record data in public health analysis and decision-making, accounting for the errors in this type of data. She is a professor of biostatistics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

References

Thomas Parran, former US Surgeon General and founder of the World Health Organization, served as the school's first dean Thomas Parran, Jr., photo portrait as surgeon general.jpg
Thomas Parran, former US Surgeon General and founder of the World Health Organization, served as the school's first dean
  1. ↑ Alberts 1987 , book Three; pp. 205
  2. ↑ Hart, Peter (2007-04-05). "U.S. News ranks Pitt grad schools". University Times. Archived from the original on 2009-01-11. Retrieved 2008-03-24.
  3. ↑ "Member School Profile: Detail: University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health". Association of Schools of Public Health. Retrieved 2008-03-24.
  4. ↑ University of Pittsburgh: Graduate School of Public Health: About
  5. ↑ "University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health". www.publichealth.pitt.edu.
  6. ↑ "Medicine: Pitt's Parran". Time. Vol. 52, no. 14. New York, NY. 1948-10-04. Archived from the original on February 1, 2011. Retrieved 2010-10-15.
  7. ↑ Alberts 1987 , book Three; pp. 206
  8. ↑ Alberts 1987 , book Three; pp. 209
  9. ↑ "University of Pittsburgh - School of Public Health: History" . Retrieved 2008-03-24.
  10. ↑ "Member School Profile: Detail: University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health". Association of Schools of Public Health. Retrieved 2008-03-25.
  11. ↑ Duda, Kathryn (2002-10-21). "Creating a Healthier World: GSPH works to protect and improve people's lives and their communities". Pitt Chronicle. Retrieved 2008-03-24.

Sources

40°26′34″N79°57′30″W / 40.442646°N 79.958211°W / 40.442646; -79.958211

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.