October 31, 2008
UC Berkeley School of Public Health Expands Initiatives in Global Health
The University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health announces two new graduate initiatives that will increase the ability of the School's faculty, students, and staff to make a significant impact on global health. The first new graduate initiative, the Global Health and Environment Program is an expansion of the campuswide Master of Science Program in Health, Environment, and Development, originally established in 1999. The second initiative is a new Global Health Leadership Track offered within the Doctor of Public Health (Dr.P.H.) Program. Both programs are now available as part of the current admissions cycle for entry in fall 2009.
The expanded Global Health and Environment Master's Program will draw an interdisciplinary group of students to study the relation of environmental hazards to health in developing countries, as did its predecessor, the Health, Environment, and Development Program. In addition to traditional environmental risks such as water and air pollution, students examine the impacts of climate change. In the decade since the original program's inception, dozens of students have conducted research in developing countries, including Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Thailand, China, Nepal, Mongolia, Uganda, and India, among others. It is directed by Kirk R. Smith, professor of global environmental health.
The new Global Health Leadership Track of the Dr.P.H. Program, headed by director Michael Jerrett, will engage students in global health and in immigrant health issues in the United States. Many Dr.P.H students have been choosing a global health curriculum and international field work, and the new Global Health Leadership Track aims to enhance the learning experiences for students engaged in global health innovation. A competitive Dr.P.H dissertation award for students in the Global Health Leadership Track will be offered by the recently established Bixby Center for Population, Health, and Sustainability starting in 2009.
The School of Public Health has a longstanding academic and experiential focus on providing opportunities for students and faculty from different academic programs to explore issues in global health. M.P.H. students may currently elect to pursue global health as a specialty area. Earlier this year, the School established the Center for Global Public Health, which serves as a forum for collaboration between global health initiatives across departments and research units. Together with the Center for Emerging and Neglected Diseases, it constitutes the Berkeley Alliance for Global Health. Both centers offer competitive funding for summer fellowships overseas for students interested in global health research with UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco faculty, a seminar series on topics related to international health, and opportunities to work with visiting faculty as a part of scholarly exchanges.
School of Public Health Dean Stephen Shortell notes the recent increase in the number of institutional partnerships between the School and other universities and public health institutes worldwide, such as the Instituto Nacional de Salud Publico (National Institute of Public Health), Mexico; the Sichuan Center of Disease Control and Prevention, China; the National University of Taiwan; and the Berkeley-Barcelona Global Health Leadership Forum. "The new training and research initiatives will enable us to expand our reach across the globe. They underscore our commitment to the integration of discovery learning and service learning."
New and expanded global health initiatives will soon be announced from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, including an institutional partnership with Sri Ramachandra University in Chennai. The School of Public Health will provide technical assistance for the development of one of the first M.P.H. programs in India, under the auspices of Kirk Smith's Fogarty International Center grant for environmental and occupational health. Funding has recently been renewed for Fogarty training for international scholars in AIDS-related research under the direction of Arthur L. Reingold, professor and chair of the School's Epidemiology Department, ensuring the twenty-first year of uninterrupted funding for the program. The UC Berkeley School of Public Health oversees more Fogarty Center supported international training and research grants than any other school of public health in the country.
For more information, please visit the Center for Global Public Health's web site.