About Public Health Sciences

Mission Statement | Brief History | Organizational Structure | Annual Report

Formal Mission Statement

The Department of Public Health Sciences focuses its energies, expertise and collaborations on enabling the University of Virginia and its School of Medicine to improve the health and well being of individuals and populations. By assembling multidisciplinary teams that combine expertise from biostatistics, clinical epidemiology, informatics and public health in collaboration with clinicians and scientists, we create new technologies for the generation, analysis, interpretation and management of basic and health-related data, as well as new educational and learning opportunities and program offerings. These efforts are intended ultimately to assist individuals, clinicians, communities and public health policymakers in making informed, wise, equitable and cost-effective choices, and to establish the University of Virginia and its School of Medicine as an international leader in medical science, technology and the increasingly complex challenges of public health and personalized medicine.

Brief History

The Department of Public Health Sciences (DPHS) was originally established in 1995 as the Department of Health Evaluation Sciences. It was created to provide comprehensive and multidisciplinary scientific and analytical services to the University of Virginia Health System, as well as other components of the University. The initial business plan described the development of an infrastructure designed to initiate, expand and enhance clinical and translational research education and activities throughout the School of Medicine rather than the traditional investigator-initiated model.

The plan also called for development of a medical-management and quality-assurance capability that supported these activities in the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center. During 1996, a series of weekend retreats was held at the Darden School with senior leadership from across the School of Medicine and the Health Sciences Center to help launch these activities. In its initial five years, the department grew in size and began having an institutional impact and a positive financial record. Beginning in approximately 2000, however, the senior leadership of the School of Medicine and Health Sciences Center elected to discontinue their support for the medical-management and quality assurance capability described in the initial business plan. The department lost a number of its key senior faculty and morale dropped.

In 2002 with the arrival of a new dean and vice president, the department re-energized. It added a new focus on public health while also continuing its ongoing clinical informatics and biostatistical and epidemiological activities. New senior leaders were recruited to head clinical informatics, biostatistics and epidemiology, and a new division of public health and a new MPH program were begun. In 2005 the Department of Public Health Sciences was adopted as the department's new name to reflect its emphasis on public health education, training and service. In 2007 the department successfully concluded a major two-year recruitment process with the appointment of Stephen Rich as a Distinguished Board of Visitors Scholar and the establishment of his new Center for Public Health Genomics at the University of Virginia.

As the formal mission statement indicates, DPHS is an infrastructure and discovery department devoted to finding new research strategies and providing new educational offerings for health promotion and preservation, disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment, as well as the development of contemporary tools in genetic risk assessment, medical decision making, biostatistical and epidemiologic methods, and medical service delivery for individuals and populations. DPHS continues its original mandate to provide support for students and investigators throughout the School of Medicine and across University grounds as they come together to learn about and develop: (1) new ways to evaluate more precisely the efficacy of new and existing medical care and health improvement practices, and (2) the efficient and fair delivery of health services.

Organizational Structure 

The Department of Public Health Sciences, which is staffed by 35 primary, a large number of secondary academic appointments and a support staff of 13, is currently composed of three major divisions and one closely aligned Center:

  • Clinical Informatics: communications technology to support and analyze biomedical research and health data.
  • Biostatistics & Epidemiology: research and consulting on the application of statistical analyses to biomedical research data. Biostatistics and Epidemiology provides statistical support for many research projects at the University of Virginia.
  • Public Health Policy & Practice: teaching, research and community interventions in public health practice and health care policy.