The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is the

public health Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the det ...

graduate school Postgraduate or graduate education refers to Academic degree, academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by higher education, post-secondary students who have earned an Undergraduate education, un ...

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

, a

private Private or privates may refer to: Music * " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation'' * Private (band), a Denmark-based band * "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...

research university A research university or a research-intensive university is a university that is committed to research as a central part of its mission. They are the most important sites at which knowledge production occurs, along with "intergenerational kno ...

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

. As the second independent, degree-granting institution for research in epidemiology and training in public health, and the largest

training facility in the United States, the school is ranked first in public health in the '' U.S. News & World Report'' rankings and has held that ranking since 1994. The school is ranked second for public health in the world by EduRank and Shanghai Rankings, behind the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

History

Originally named the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, the school was founded in 1916 by

William H. Welch William Henry Welch (April 8, 1850 – April 30, 1934) was an American physician, pathologist, bacteriologist, and medical-school administrator. He was one of the "Big Four" founding professors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...

, the second school of public health in the U.S. after Tulane University. The school was renamed the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on April 20, 2001, in honor of

Michael Bloomberg Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is an American businessman, politician, philanthropist, and author. He is the majority owner, co-founder and CEO of Bloomberg L.P. He was Mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013, and was a ca ...

(founder of the eponymous media company) for his financial support and commitment to the school and Johns Hopkins University. Bloomberg has donated a total of $2.9 billion to Johns Hopkins University over a period of several decades. The school is also the founder of

Delta Omega Delta Omega () is the honorary society for studies in public health, founded at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. History Delta Omega was founded in 1924 by two graduate students at the Johns Hopkins University B ...

(est. 1924), the national honorary society for graduate training in public health. The Bloomberg School is fully accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH).

Origins

In 1913, the

Rockefeller Foundation The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America, after the Carneg ...

sponsored a conference on the need for public

health education Health education is a profession of educating people about health. Areas within this profession encompass environmental health, physical health, social health, emotional health, intellectual health, and spiritual health, as well as sexual and r ...

in the United States. Foundation officials were convinced that a new profession of public health was needed. It would be allied to medicine but also distinct, with its own identity and educational institutions. The result of deliberations between public health leaders and foundation officials was the Welch–Rose Report of 1915, which laid out the need for adequately trained public health workers, and envisioned an "institute of hygiene" for the United States. The report reflected the different preferences of the plan's two architects—

William Henry Welch William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Eng ...

favored

scientific research The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific m ...

, whereas

Wickliffe Rose Wickliffe Rose (November 19, 1862 in Saulsbury, Tennessee – September 5, 1931 in British Columbia) was the first director of the International Health Board of the Rockefeller Foundation and won the Public Welfare Medal The Public Welfare M ...

wanted an emphasis on public health practice. In June 1916, the executive committee of the Rockefeller Foundation approved the plan to organize an institute or school of public health at

in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. The institute was named the School of Hygiene and Public Health, indicating a compromise between those who wanted the practical public health training on the British model and those who favored basic scientific research on the German model. Welch, the first dean of the

Johns Hopkins School of Medicine The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM) is the medical school of Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1893, the School of Medicine shares a campus with the Johns Hopkins Hospi ...

, also became the founding dean of the first school of public health in the United States. The facility is located on the former Maryland Hospital site founded in 1797. The Maryland Hospital was originally built as a hospital to care for

Yellow Fever Yellow fever is a viral disease of typically short duration. In most cases, symptoms include fever, chills, loss of appetite, nausea, muscle pains – particularly in the back – and headaches. Symptoms typically improve within five days. In ...

for the indigent away from the city. In 1840, the hospital expanded to exclusively care for the mentally ill. In 1873, the buildings were torn down as the facility relocated to a new site as the

Spring Grove Hospital Center Spring Grove Hospital Center, formerly known as Spring Grove State Hospital, is a psychiatric hospital located in the Baltimore, Maryland, suburb of Catonsville. Founded in 1797 as a general medical and psychiatric retreat, Spring Grove Mental ...

Legacy

The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health represents the archetype for formalized public health training and epidemiology education in the United States. By 1922, other schools of public health at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, Columbia and

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

had all been established in accordance with the Hopkins model. The Rockefeller Foundation continued to sponsor the creation of public health schools in the United States and around the world in the 1920s and 1930s, extending the American model of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health to countries such as Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, England, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Rumania, Sweden, Turkey, and Yugoslavia.

Leaders

The official title of the head of the school has changed periodically between

director Director may refer to: Literature * ''Director'' (magazine), a British magazine * ''The Director'' (novel), a 1971 novel by Henry Denker * ''The Director'' (play), a 2000 play by Nancy Hasty Music * Director (band), an Irish rock band * ''D ...

and

dean Dean may refer to: People * Dean (given name) * Dean (surname), a surname of Anglo-Saxon English origin * Dean (South Korean singer), a stage name for singer Kwon Hyuk * Dean Delannoit, a Belgian singer most known by the mononym Dean Titles * ...

throughout the years. Originally the title was director. In 1931, it was changed to dean and in 1946 back to director. In 1958, the title again became dean. The directors and deans of the Bloomberg School include: #

William H. Welch William Henry Welch (April 8, 1850 – April 30, 1934) was an American physician, pathologist, bacteriologist, and medical-school administrator. He was one of the "Big Four" founding professors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.William Henry Howell William Henry Howell (February 20, 1860 – February 6, 1945) was an American physiologist. He pioneered the use of heparin as a blood anti-coagulant. Early life William Henry Howell was born on February 20, 1860, in Baltimore, Maryland. He gra ...

(1927–1931) #

Wade Hampton Frost Wade Hampton Frost (March 3, 1880 – May 1, 1938) was born in Marshall, Virginia. He was the son of a country doctor. Before college, he was first homeschooled by his mother, and then spent the final two years in boarding school. He received his ...

(1931–1934) # Allen W. Freeman (1934–1937) #

Lowell Reed Lowell Jacob Reed (January 8, 1886 – April 29, 1966) was 7th president of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He was born in Berlin, New Hampshire, the son of Jason Reed, a millwright and farmer, and Louella Coffin Reed. Edu ...

(1937–1947) #

Ernest L. Stebbins Ernest is a given name derived from Germanic languages, Germanic word ''ernst'', meaning "serious". Notable people and fictional characters with the name include: People *Archduke Ernest of Austria (1553–1595), son of Maximilian II, Holy Roman ...

(1947–1967) # John C. Hume (1967–1977) # Donald A. Henderson (1977–1990) #

Alfred Sommer Alfred (Al) Sommer (born October 2, 1942) is a prominent American ophthalmologist and epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research on vitamin A in the 1970s and 1980s revealed that dosing even mildly vitamin ...

(1990–2005) # Michael J. Klag (2005–2017) #

Ellen J. MacKenzie Ellen J. MacKenzie is the dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is an expert in trauma care and health policy and management, and an elected fellow of the National Academy of Medicine. Education MacKenzie received he ...

(2017–present)

Reputation and ranking

The Bloomberg School is the largest school of public health in the world, with 875 primary and 833 affiliated faculty, and 3,639 students from 97 countries. It is home to over 80 research centers and institutes with research ongoing in the U.S. and more than 60 countries worldwide. The school ranks first in federal research support from the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

(NIH), receives nearly 25 percent of all funds distributed among the 40 U.S. schools of public health, and has consistently been ranked first among schools of public health by '' U.S. News & World Report''. The school is ranked second for public health in the world by EduRank and Shanghai Rankings, behind the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Academic degrees and departments

The school offers

master's degrees A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

doctoral degrees A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

postdoctoral A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to p ...

training, and

residency Residency may refer to: * Domicile (law), the act of establishing or maintaining a residence in a given place ** Permanent residency, indefinite residence within a country despite not having citizenship * Residency (medicine), a stage of postgrad ...

programs in general

preventive medicine Preventive healthcare, or prophylaxis, consists of measures taken for the purposes of disease prevention.Hugh R. Leavell and E. Gurney Clark as "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting physical and mental hea ...

and

occupational medicine Occupational medicine, until 1960 called industrial medicine, is the branch of medicine which is concerned with the maintenance of health in the workplace, including prevention and treatment of diseases and injuries, with secondary objectives ...

. and combined and certificate training programs in various areas of public health. It is composed of 10 academic departments: *

Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology an ...

* Biostatistics * Environmental Health and Engineering * Epidemiology: has the largest overall postdoctoral training program in the School of Public Health. Many postdoctoral fellows and predoctoral trainees (master's level and doctoral level degree students) are supported by NIH-funded training programs. Affiliated centers and institutes include George W. Comstock Center for Public Health Research and Prevention and the Wendy Klag Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities. * Health, Behavior and Society * Health Policy and Management * International Health * Mental Health * Molecular Microbiology and Immunology * Population, Family and Reproductive Health

Location

The Bloomberg School of Public Health is located in the East Baltimore campus of the Johns Hopkins University. The campus, collectively known as the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions (JHMI), is also home to the

School of Medicine A medical school is a tertiary educational institution, or part of such an institution, that teaches medicine, and awards a professional degree for physicians. Such medical degrees include the Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS, MB ...

and the

School of Nursing Nurse education consists of the theoretical and practical training provided to nurses with the purpose to prepare them for their duties as nursing care professionals. This education is provided to student nurses by experienced nurses and other med ...

and comprises several city blocks, radiating outwards from the Billings Building of the

Johns Hopkins Hospital The Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH) is the teaching hospital and biomedical research facility of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, located in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. It was founded in 1889 using money from a bequest of over $7 million (1873 mo ...

with its historic dome. The main building on which the school is located is on North Wolfe Street; it has nine floors and features an observation area and a fitness center on the top floor. The Bloomberg School also occupies

Hampton Hampton may refer to: Places Australia *Hampton bioregion, an IBRA biogeographic region in Western Australia *Hampton, New South Wales *Hampton, Queensland, a town in the Toowoomba Region * Hampton, Victoria Canada * Hampton, New Brunswick *Ha ...

House on North Broadway. The school is also serviced by the Welch Medical Library, a central resource shared by all the schools of the Medical Campus. The campus includes the

Residence Hall and the

Denton Cooley Denton Arthur Cooley (August 22, 1920 – November 18, 2016) was an American heart and cardiothoracic surgeon famous for performing the first implantation of a total artificial heart. Cooley was also the founder and surgeon in-chief of The T ...

Recreational Center. Public transportation to and from the campus is served by the

Baltimore Metro Subway The Metro SubwayLink is a rapid transit line serving the greater area of Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States, and is operated by the Maryland Transit Administration. The segment in Downtown Baltimore is underground, and most of the line outs ...

, local buses, and the JHMI shuttle.

Notable alumni

Some of the graduates of the Bloomberg School of Public Health include * Dr. Chen Chien-jen –

Vice President A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on t ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

(2016–); former Minister of Health, VP and

Academician An academician is a full member of an artistic, literary, engineering, or scientific academy. In many countries, it is an honorific title used to denote a full member of an academy that has a strong influence on national scientific life. In syst ...

of national academic institute (

Academia Sinica Academia Sinica (AS, la, 1=Academia Sinica, 3=Chinese Academy; ), headquartered in Nangang, Taipei, is the national academy of Taiwan. Founded in Nanking, the academy supports research activities in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from ...

) *

Leroy Edgar Burney Leroy Edgar Burney (December 31, 1906 – July 31, 1998) was an American physician and public health official. He was appointed the eighth Surgeon General of the United States from 1956 to 1961. Biography Early years Burney was born in Burney, I ...

: 8th

Surgeon General of the United States The surgeon general of the United States is the operational head of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (PHSCC) and thus the leading spokesperson on matters of public health in the federal government of the United States. Th ...

, first to publicly identify cigarette smoke as a cause of lung cancer *

Virginia Apgar Virginia Apgar (June 7, 1909August 7, 1974) was an American physician, obstetrical anesthesiologist and medical researcher, best known as the inventor of the Apgar Score, a way to quickly assess the health of a newborn child immediately after bir ...

: '' Apgar test'',

Anesthesiology Anesthesiology, anaesthesiology, or anaesthesia is the medical specialty concerned with the total perioperative care of patients before, during and after surgery. It encompasses anesthesia, intensive care medicine, critical emergency medicine, ...

Teratology Teratology is the study of abnormalities of physiological development in organisms during their life span. It is a sub-discipline in medical genetics which focuses on the classification of congenital abnormalities in dysmorphology. The related t ...

, founder of the field of

Neonatology Neonatology is a subspecialty of pediatrics that consists of the medical care of newborn infants, especially the ill or premature newborn. It is a hospital-based specialty, and is usually practised in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). The ...

* Dorland J. Davis: 3rd Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases *

Alexander Langmuir Alexander Duncan Langmuir (12 September 1910 – 22 November 1993) was an American epidemiologist. He is renowned for creating the Epidemic Intelligence Service. Biography Alexander D. Langmuir was born in Santa Monica, California. He received h ...

Epidemiologist Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population. It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evidenc ...

, founder of the

Epidemic Intelligence Service The Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) is a program of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The modern EIS is a two-year, hands-on post-doctoral training program in epidemiology, with a focus on field work. History Creation ...

* George W. Comstock: