 | Brian Leaderer is co-director with Michael Bracken of an EPH research center that studies the health of pregnant women, their newborns and infants. |
Dean Michael Merson recalls a time over a decade and a half ago when a committee was formed to examine the question of whether the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health (EPH) should be closed.
The committee recommended against this, and since then, says Merson, EPH has grown and flourished, with the level of interest in the areas of study it offers skyrocketing among students.
The resurgence of interest in public health is a testament to the diversity of areas in which it is involved, explains the dean.
"By its very nature, public health is multidisciplinary because it deals with the many social and economic determinants and consequences of disease and a broad range of approaches to health promotion and disease prevention," he notes.
EPH offers joint degrees with many other schools at Yale, including the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Management, Law, Forestry & Environmental Studies, and Divinity. It also offers joint degree programs with the Center for International and Area Studies and the Graduate School's International Development and Economics Program. In addition, it has links to the Center for the Study of Globalization and various departments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
"Working together with other programs at Yale is an important step in achieving our goals," says Merson. "This is a very exciting time for public health. Our graduates are involved in an array of fields, and we are expanding the kinds of educational programs we offer."
One of 34 nationally accredited schools of public health in the country (and one of the first to be established in the United States), EPH is also a department at the School of Medicine.
Today's students of public health are interested in a wide range of issues, such as AIDS, obesity, health disparities, and smoking prevention, Merson says. The surge in interest in the public health field in general, he notes, is due in part to recent events that have defined a new American mindset, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the fear of infectious diseases like anthrax, one case of which occurred in nearby Oxford, Connecticut, during the outbreak in 2001 associated with contaminated letters. Both fall under the auspices of EPH researchers, and are bread-and-butter issues for those in the practice of public health, explains the dean.
Much of the interest in public health, he adds, also stems from the fact that EPH researchers are at the forefront of new research in rapidly evolving fields such as cancer epidemiology, etiology and prevention, and perinatal and pediatric epidemiology. In fact, in the past 10 years, external research dollars to EPH have gone up almost three-fold, notes Merson.
Fifteen faculty are involved in cancer-related research alone. One of them, Professor Susan Mayne, is the principal investigator on a grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which chose Yale to be the first site in the country to partner with NCI to train pre-doctoral students in modern methodologies for evaluating determinants Dean Michael Merson recalls a time over a decade and a half ago when a committee was formed to examine the question of whether the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health (EPH) should be closed.
The committee recommended against this, and since then, says Merson, EPH has grown and flourished, with the level of interest in the areas of study it offers skyrocketing among students.
The resurgence of interest in public health is a testament to the diversity of areas in which it is involved, explains the dean.
"By its very nature, public health is multidisciplinary because it deals with the many social and economic determinants and consequences of disease and a broad range of approaches to health promotion and disease prevention," he notes.
EPH offers joint degrees with many other schools at Yale, including the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, Management, Law, Forestry & Environmental Studies, and Divinity. It also offers joint degree programs with the Center for International and Area Studies and the Graduate School's International Development and Economics Program. In addition, it has links to the Center for the Study of Globalization and various departments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
"Working together with other programs at Yale is an important step in achieving our goals," says Merson. "This is a very exciting time for public health. Our graduates are involved in an array of fields, and we are expanding the kinds of educational programs we offer."
One of 34 nationally accredited schools of public health in the country (and one of the first to be established in the United States), EPH is also a department at the School of Medicine.
Today's students of public health are interested in a wide range of issues, such as AIDS, obesity, health disparities, and smoking prevention, Merson says. The surge in interest in the public health field in general, he notes, is due in part to recent events that have defined a new American mindset, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the fear of infectious diseases like anthrax, one case of which occurred in nearby Oxford, Connecticut, during the outbreak in 2001 associated with contaminated letters. Both fall under the auspices of EPH researchers, and are bread-and-butter issues for those in the practice of public health, explains the dean.
Much of the interest in public health, he adds, also stems from the fact that EPH researchers are at the forefront of new research in rapidly evolving fields such as cancer epidemiology, etiology and prevention, and perinatal and pediatric epidemiology. In fact, in the past 10 years, external research dollars to EPH have gone up almost three-fold, notes Merson.
Fifteen faculty are involved in cancer-related research alone. One of them, Professor Susan Mayne, is the principal investigator on a grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which chose Yale to be the first site in the country to partner with NCI to train pre-doctoral students in modern methodologies for evaluating determinants of human cancer risk, particularly nutritional and environmental determinants of risk, including their interactions with genetic factors. Two other professors, Brian Leaderer and Michael Bracken, co-direct the Center for Perinatal, Pediatric and Environmental Epidemiology, which conducts population-based studies concerning the health of pregnant women, their newborns and infants. Of major current interest are studies examining perinatal and environmental risk factors that lead to early onset and more severe asthma in children and young adults.
"We try to blend the best in academic and scholarly research with the application of results of our work," states Merson. "Much of our science is more on the applied side. But what sets EPH apart from many other schools of public health is that some of our faculty undertake laboratory research."
For example, EPH has a unique vector biology program. Professor Serap Aksoy has the only Tsetse fly colony in North America, and EPH continues to conduct pioneering research in geographic information systems applications in infectious disease epidemiology. Professors Durland Fish and Theodore Holford have been awarded a nearly $3 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop a spatial risk model for Lyme disease in the United States. The project is designed to predict the risk of developing Lyme disease from a tick bite acquired anywhere throughout the range of the deer tick vector, and will include predictions of the severity of disease resulting from different genotypes (strains) of the Lyme disease bacterium. It is the largest field project ever conducted on Lyme disease.
EPH faculty also undertake basic science research. These include studies on the immunology of autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and Type I diabetes. Professor Nancy Ruddle is co-investigator on a Multiple Sclerosis Collaborative Center that includes investigators from neurology, immunobiology and laboratory medicine. Research in the areas of parasitology and virology includes basic and applied studies on the agents that cause AIDS, sleeping sickness, malaria and Leishmaniasis.
Much of the department's expansion has been in the area of education, which is the responsibility of Leaderer, who also serves as EPH's deputy dean. In the past year, the Graduate School approved a one-year M.S. degree program in chronic disease epidemiology, which complements EPH's existing two-year M.S. degree in biostatistics. Next year, EPH will offer a one year M.P.H. program for physicians and others working in the health sciences. Discussions are also underway regarding a B.A./B.S.-M.P.H. program with Yale College, whereby college students will be able to spend the year after their graduation at EPH in order to obtain an M.P.H.
"There is a noticeable rising interest among undergraduates in public health," says Merson. "The most common student from outside EPH taking a class at EPH this semester is a college student. They are attracted to the many important issues in public health, as reflected by 'P.H., The Yale Journal of Public Health, An Undergraduate Publication,' which was started last year by students at Yale College."
In addition, through the efforts of Ruddle, who serves as director of graduate studies, EPH has strengthened its doctoral program and has seen its number of doctoral program applicants rise from 67 in 1996 to 220 in 2004.
"Our goal is to strengthen and grow our research efforts and educational programs, bearing in mind that our graduates pursue careers in academics, the private sector and public health practice, domestically and internationally," Merson says.
EPH has become increasingly involved with global health issues, as evidenced by the large numbers of M.P.H. students who apply for admission and the expansion of the faculty in this area. The Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA), which Merson directs, has legal, policy and ethics and international research cores. CIRA's goal is to support HIV prevention research in the United States and abroad in underserved and vulnerable populations. (See related story.) CIRA has been quite successful, says Merson, receiving grants from a number of funders, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which recently awarded it a $2.1 million grant to support HIV prevention research among high-risk populations in India. Fourteen EPH faculty are involved in HIV/AIDS research projects through CIRA.
In addition, EPH Associate Professor Elizabeth Bradley, known for her research on quality of hospital care in the U.S., has recently been involved with international issues. She is leading a Yale group that is working with the World Health Organization, the Ministry of Health in China, the Society of Infection Control Management and hospitals from the People's Liberation Army system to conduct a new baseline survey of current hand and dental hygiene practices in China. The study is part of the Ministry of Health's long-term effort to improve infection control "best practices" in Chinese hospitals. (The 2003 SARS outbreak highlighted the importance of infection control practices in China and brought infection control to the forefront of international attention, notes Merson.) Professor Derek Yach -- who recently arrived at Yale from the World Health Organization and is an international expert in prevention of smoking and obesity -- will head up EPH's Global Health Division beginning Jan. 1.
"To keep the momentum of growth going," Merson says, "we need to continue to expand our faculty, for example in the social and behavioral sciences, which is the fastest growing area in the department, and to build additional links to other schools and departments in the university. While our traditional strength has been in epidemiology, equally important today are the social and behavioral determinants of health."
Since the mid-1990s, Merson says, the faculty has expanded by close to 50%. This, in turn, has created a need for more space and resources to support the program's research and educational goals.
"Since I arrived, we've renovated half of our main building; our next priority is to renovate our laboratories," Merson says.
In addition to his many duties at EPH, Merson still finds time to work on a book, which will chronicle the first 15 years of the AIDS pandemic. He will examine what happened, why it happened and how the world responded. He is also the senior editor of the only textbook on international health.
"There has never been a more exciting time to be in public health," asserts the dean. "It has been enjoyable to work with a very committed faculty and to build up the many partnerships we have around the University."
-- By Karen Peart
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