Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, located at 722 West 168th Street on the Columbia University Medical Center campus in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, is a school of public health recognized by the Council on Education for Public Health. The School of Public Health began in 1922 as the DeLamar Institute of Public Health.[1] It became an official school within the university in 1945. In 1999, following a $33 million grant from the Joseph L. Mailman Foundation,[2] the school was renamed the Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health.
Currently, the school enrolls nearly 1000 students and is one of the largest recipients for sponsored research pertaining to public health. In 2012, the School redesigned and implemented a new Master of Public Health (MPH) that has since been indicated as a model at other schools in the United States and worldwide. The new MPH program is designed to meet the challenges of the times, such as globalization, urbanization, population aging, and health disparities. To accomplish this, the programs gives students a global perspective on health; trains them across disciplines; imparts a “life-course†approach to disease prevention that looks across the lifespan; and teaches critical thinking and leadership skills that empower them to turn science into action. In the words of Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, the revamped MPH curriculum has provided a new approach to "guide and improve public health education in the country, and offered a guide for other public health programs worldwide". In addition to the 2-year Master of Public Health, the Mailman School also offers a Master of Science degree, which is offered by the departments of Biostatistics, Environmental Health Sciences, Epidemiology, Sociomedical Sciences, and Population and Family Health.  Compared to the 2-year Master of Public Health, the Master of Science is often a fast track to public health education, as it includes several programs of 12 or 18 months.
The main building of the Mailman School of Public Health, the Allan Rosenfield Building, was constructed in 1930. It is located at 1050 Riverside Drive in the Columbia University Medical Campus. The building, named after Allan Rosenfield, the long-time Dean of the Mailman School of Public Health and one of the giants in the world of public health, has been recently renovated to create an energy-efficient, environmentally-considered fit-out.  The new space was designed  to extend natural light as much as possible, and to do so in an energy-efficient manner.  Other sustainable features include efficient lighting with occupancy sensors, Energy Star office equipment and appliances, high efficiency fan coil units, water conserving fixtures achieving over a 30% water usage reduction, and low/no VOC building materials and low-emitting furniture systems.
Staff
Linda P. Fried is Dean and DeLamar Professor of Public Health. A researcher of healthy aging and longevity, her work helped define the syndrome of frailty. She designed Experience Corps, a program in 22 cities that puts older volunteers to work in public schools, yielding benefits to all generations. Fried has been recognized by Congress as “a living legend in medicineâ€.
477 faculty members work in over 100 countries, as well as in the Northern Manhattan community. Their research areas include climate and health, HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, healthy aging, maternal health, mental health, environmental toxins and children's environmental health, climate and health, epigenetics, the human microbiome, the history and ethics of public health, healthcare reform and how to strengthen healthcare systems, among many other critical issues.
Department Chairs
- Biostatistics - F. DuBois Bowman, PhD
- Epidemiology - Charles Branas, PhD
- Environmental Health Sciences - Andrea Baccarelli, MD, PhD, MPH
- Health Policy and Management - Michael S. Sparer, PhD, JD
- Population and Family Health - John Santelli, MD, MPH
- Sociomedical Sciences - Lisa Metsch, PhD
Students
- 1,300 students
- 84% master's students
- 15% doctoral students
- 42 states represented
- 44 countries represented
- 22% non-U.S. citizens
- 38% ethnic/racial minorities
Educational Programs
According to the School's facts and figures webpage, the school offers MPH, MHA, MS, PhD, and DrPH degrees. The School's educational offerings include 10 dual degree programs with other schools at Columbia University. Every year, students can access more than 300 classes at the Mailman School and can also take classes at the other schools of Columbia University. The school has an excellent student-teacher ratio with a median class size of 24 participants.
The School has reported excellent job placement results; 96% of its master-level graduates were employed in Public Health or Health Care (88% of respondents) or continuing their studies in graduate school (8% of respondents) just six months after graduation. Of the remaining 4% of graduates, half were not seeking a job by choice and only 2% of the repondents were still seeking. The overall average salary 6 months after graduation was $77,495 annually.
International Longevity Center
Organized in 1990 by Robert N. Butler, M.D., Professor of Geriatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, The International Longevity Center (ILC) is a not-for-profit, nonpartisan research, policy and education organization whose mission is to help societies address the issues of population aging and longevity in positive and constructive ways and to highlight older people's productivity and contributions to their families and to society as a whole.
In 2011, honoring the wishes of the late Dr. Butler, the mission, work, and the assets of the ILC became the foundation for an interdisciplinary center on aging at Columbia University, anchored at the Mailman School of Public Health.
Epigenetics and Precision Medicine at the Mailman School of Public Health
The Mailman School of Public Health is one of the institutions worldwide with the highest concentration of investigators with active research programs in human epigenetics. Recent and ongoing projects include investigations of changes in DNA methylation that may accumulate in children even before they are born due to environmental influences, epigenetic reprogramming due to exposures to arsenic, nutritional interventions to ward off air pollution effects on the human epigenome, liquid biopsies of the liver epigenome to predict overall survival in patients with liver cancer, persistent influences of maternal smoking during pregnancy on offspring's DNA methylation in midlife, epigenetic effects from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and several others. Since 2017, the Mailman School of Public Health offers a summer Epigenetic Boot Camp for Planning and Analyzing DNA Methylation Studies, a two-day intensive boot camp of seminars and hands-on analytical sessions that provides an overview of concepts, techniques, and data analysis methods utilized in human epigenetics studies.
The 2016 recruitment of Dr. Baccarelli to lead the Laboratory of Precision Environmental Biosciences has opened new research and teaching activities in Precision Medicine and Precision Prevention. The Laboratory of Precision Environmental Biosciences, regarded as one of the pioneering epigenetics labs worldwide, is the central focus of a wider Precision Medicine program at the Mailman School of Public Health focusing on public health and prevention. Precision Medicine and Prevention at the Mailman School includes research and education on the human microbiome, extracellular RNA communication, molecular epidemiology, genomics, viromics, mitochondriomics, statistical genetics, computational biology, and biomarker sciences. The Precision Medicine at Mailman offers a unique combination of cutting-edge lab technology with large scale studies and applications in population sciences and public health, including predictive analytics and analysis of return on investment
Notable alumni
- Chelsea Clinton
- Joseph L. Fleiss
- Tom Frieden
- Brian Lehrer
- Ilan Meyer
- Robert Lewis Morgan
- Ernest S. Tierkel
- Christy Turlington
- Yvonne Thornton
See also
- 2x2 Project
References
External links
- Official website
- Public Health Rankings
- International Longevity Center
- Laboratory of Environmental Precision Biosciences