Public Health Division

The mission of public health, as defined by the Institute of Medicine in 1988, is "the fulfillment of society's interest in assuring the conditions in which people can be healthy." The first School of Public Health in the United States was founded at Johns Hopkins University in 1916. In the years since, 38 Schools of Public Health have been founded throughout the United States, nearly two-thirds of which are located at state universalities.

The five core areas of public health include:

• Health promotion and behavioral sciences (also referred to as social and behavioral sciences): concepts and methods of social and behavioral sciences relevant to identification and the solution of public health problems;
• Health service, policy and administration: planning, organization, administration, management, evaluation and policy analysis of health programs;
• Environmental health sciences: environmental factors including biological, physical and chemical factors which affect the health of the community or the workplace;
• Epidemiology: distributions and determinants of disease, disabilities and death in human populations, the characteristics and dynamics of human populations, and the natural history of disease and biologic basis of health;
• Biostatistics: collection, storage, retrieval, analysis and interpretations of health data, design and analysis of health data, design and analysis of health-related surveys and experiments, and concepts and practice of statistical data analysis.

The Southern Center

The Southern Center for Communication, Health and Poverty develops, fosters, and translates health communication research to enhance the health and well-being of economically disadvantaged people of the South.