About the Campaign
At the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, we believe that everyone, everywhere, deserves the opportunity to live a healthy life, and that no one should be the victim of preventable disease, injury, or premature death. The School is working to fulfill this vision on three fronts:
- By educating and developing the public health professional leadership of tomorrow
- By conducting rigorous interdisciplinary research into the determinants of health, both good and bad, and using the answers to drive action in the policy-making arena
- By serving as a resource of knowledge and expertise for you and your community, for state and local government, and for public health practitioners around the globe
A Legacy of Leadership
Consistently ranked among the leading public health graduate schools in the United States, the UC Berkeley School of Public Health has a 65-year legacy of achievement in helping to shape public health policies, strategies, and practices in California and around the world. Some 12,000 Berkeley graduates have put their education and skills into practice in the public health field worldwide.
The demand and need for our highly skilled graduates is growing, along with the challenges to public health at home and abroad. There is an estimated national shortage of 250,000 public health professionals. An estimated 50 percent of California's governmental public health workers will retire in the next five years. The need for superior public health education, research, and action has never been more urgent.
A Unique Opportunity
To meet that need, the School has embarked on an ambitious plan to double enrollment, increase our faculty and staff, and build a new, world-class public health center on the Berkeley campus. These new facilities are critical if the School is to continue to attract and retain top-tier faculty, and enroll greater numbers of qualified applicants and equip them with the skills to meet society's health needs.
State funding is important, but it covers only 11 percent of the School's operating budget. The vast majority of support comes from grants that are designated for specific research use only. Private philanthropy is essential to make our vision a reality, which in turn will make us even more competitive in attracting grants to develop solutions to the health challenges of today and tomorrow.
Support for the new facilities and programs is an opportunity to not only sustain the School's legacy of leadership, but also to have an even greater impact in the future. A gift to the Campaign for the School of Public Health is an investment that pays dividends in the form of longer life expectancy, lower health care costs, higher productivity and prosperity, and better quality of life—for you, your family, your community, and your world.
