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Profile: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health at 100
World Report
Chris Hartlove/JHSPH
Research Focus Profile: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health at 100
Mike Coppola/Staff
Michael Klag
JHSPH
Michael Bloomberg
Chris Hartlove/JHSPH
Susan Baker
2370
The accomplishments of its faculty and alumni read like a greatest hits list for public health. Perhaps that’s not surprising, since, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, MD, USA, whose 100th anniversary is on June 13, is the oldest and largest public health school in the USA. Among their many achievements, the school’s faculty and alumni can take credit for: discovering the role of vitamin D in preventing rickets; directing WHO’s global campaign to eradicate smallpox; developing chlorination and establishing modern water and sewage systems in 50 countries; and undertaking the world’s longestrunning HIV cohort study. Michael Klag has served as dean since 2005. He arrived more than 30 years ago for a fellowship in medicine. “I wanted to learn the tools of clinical research”, Klag recalls. Medical school faculty told him he needed a degree in epidemiology, but he decided to get a masters in public health (MPH) instead. “That exposed me to a whole variety of concepts”, he recalls. He had worked in a community health centre for 2 years and recognised the need for prevention, “but I didn’t really know that there was a science behind prevention”. Klag has seen many changes at the school and in the specialty of public health since he was a student. “Certainly, the school is far bigger”, he says. “And now we use a lot of technology in our educational mission.” Out of the school’s 2200 students, 300–400 are enrolled in the online MPH programme, launched in 1999. And, of course, the specialty of public health has evolved over the past 30 years. “It’s a whole different set of challenges”, Klag says. Although “we can’t take our hands off the controls in terms of infectious disease”, he says, ”more than half the people in the world
today die from non-communicable diseases”. Perhaps the most obvious change at the school has been its name, which had been the School of Hygiene and Public Health. In 2001, Hopkins renamed it in honour of Michael Bloomberg, who later that year was elected mayor of New York City. The multibillionaire earned an undergraduate degree in engineering from Hopkins and has donated more than US$1 billion to the university. “What transformed our school was the incredible support of Mike Bloomberg”, Klag says. “He gave us not only money, but he helped formulate our vision and was an incredible role model, perhaps the most enlightened public official ever.” Under Bloomberg’s leadership, for example, New York in 2002 became the first major US city to ban smoking in bars and restaurants. Like Klag, a number of faculty earned public health degrees at Hopkins and either never left or eventually returned. Susan Baker earned her MPH in 1968. While a student, Baker worked as a computer programmer in the department of chronic diseases and was told she could skip a course on that topic if she wrote a paper about it. “There isn’t any chronic disease that really fascinates me”, she told her husband, Timothy, a faculty member at the time. “I feel like an accident looking for a place to happen.” He suggested that she look at the relationship between chronic diseases and accidents. Instead, Baker, now a professor emeritus, found Hopkins to be her place for pioneering work in injury prevention. In 1987, she founded and became the first director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy. Baker is known for developing the widely used Injury Severity Score, a method for assessing patients with multiple injuries, and her research has
led to laws and policies to improve the safety of children in cars, teenage drivers, airplane pilots, lorry drivers, motorcyclists, and pedestrians. “You don’t do research just to do research, just to get a paper published, just to get a salary”, she says. “You use your research, your own and other people’s, to make a difference. To make that happen, you become an advocate.” Keshia Pollack is one of the next generation of injury prevention researcher–advocates inspired by Baker. While working on her MPH at Yale University, CT, USA, Pollack received a scholarship to attend a week-long summer institute on injury prevention at Hopkins. While there, “I met all the folks who influenced my career. Hopkins quickly became the top of my list [for her PhD].” Pollack earned her PhD in 2005 and left Hopkins for about a year for postdoctoral work. She returned to the Bloomberg school as the third person to hold an endowed careerdevelopment chair in injury prevention, a 3 year position. She is now an associate professor of health policy and management and is affiliated with the injury research and policy centre. “I have found that no matter what you want to study or learn about in public health, somebody at Bloomberg is doing it”, says Pollack. Another Hopkins public health school first is its academic programme in international health, which was launched in 1961 by Timothy Baker and, since 2013, has been chaired by David Peters. ”From the beginning”, Peters says, “the focus was on addressing the problems of disadvantaged people, this notion of promoting justice and equity”—an ethos that no doubt remains at the heart of the school as it looks towards its next century of improving public health.
Rita Rubin www.thelancet.com Vol 387 June 11, 2016
Chris Hartlove/JHSPH
Research Focus Profile: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health at 100
Mike Coppola/Staff
Michael Klag
JHSPH
Michael Bloomberg
Chris Hartlove/JHSPH
Susan Baker
2370
The accomplishments of its faculty and alumni read like a greatest hits list for public health. Perhaps that’s not surprising, since, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, MD, USA, whose 100th anniversary is on June 13, is the oldest and largest public health school in the USA. Among their many achievements, the school’s faculty and alumni can take credit for: discovering the role of vitamin D in preventing rickets; directing WHO’s global campaign to eradicate smallpox; developing chlorination and establishing modern water and sewage systems in 50 countries; and undertaking the world’s longestrunning HIV cohort study. Michael Klag has served as dean since 2005. He arrived more than 30 years ago for a fellowship in medicine. “I wanted to learn the tools of clinical research”, Klag recalls. Medical school faculty told him he needed a degree in epidemiology, but he decided to get a masters in public health (MPH) instead. “That exposed me to a whole variety of concepts”, he recalls. He had worked in a community health centre for 2 years and recognised the need for prevention, “but I didn’t really know that there was a science behind prevention”. Klag has seen many changes at the school and in the specialty of public health since he was a student. “Certainly, the school is far bigger”, he says. “And now we use a lot of technology in our educational mission.” Out of the school’s 2200 students, 300–400 are enrolled in the online MPH programme, launched in 1999. And, of course, the specialty of public health has evolved over the past 30 years. “It’s a whole different set of challenges”, Klag says. Although “we can’t take our hands off the controls in terms of infectious disease”, he says, ”more than half the people in the world
today die from non-communicable diseases”. Perhaps the most obvious change at the school has been its name, which had been the School of Hygiene and Public Health. In 2001, Hopkins renamed it in honour of Michael Bloomberg, who later that year was elected mayor of New York City. The multibillionaire earned an undergraduate degree in engineering from Hopkins and has donated more than US$1 billion to the university. “What transformed our school was the incredible support of Mike Bloomberg”, Klag says. “He gave us not only money, but he helped formulate our vision and was an incredible role model, perhaps the most enlightened public official ever.” Under Bloomberg’s leadership, for example, New York in 2002 became the first major US city to ban smoking in bars and restaurants. Like Klag, a number of faculty earned public health degrees at Hopkins and either never left or eventually returned. Susan Baker earned her MPH in 1968. While a student, Baker worked as a computer programmer in the department of chronic diseases and was told she could skip a course on that topic if she wrote a paper about it. “There isn’t any chronic disease that really fascinates me”, she told her husband, Timothy, a faculty member at the time. “I feel like an accident looking for a place to happen.” He suggested that she look at the relationship between chronic diseases and accidents. Instead, Baker, now a professor emeritus, found Hopkins to be her place for pioneering work in injury prevention. In 1987, she founded and became the first director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy. Baker is known for developing the widely used Injury Severity Score, a method for assessing patients with multiple injuries, and her research has
led to laws and policies to improve the safety of children in cars, teenage drivers, airplane pilots, lorry drivers, motorcyclists, and pedestrians. “You don’t do research just to do research, just to get a paper published, just to get a salary”, she says. “You use your research, your own and other people’s, to make a difference. To make that happen, you become an advocate.” Keshia Pollack is one of the next generation of injury prevention researcher–advocates inspired by Baker. While working on her MPH at Yale University, CT, USA, Pollack received a scholarship to attend a week-long summer institute on injury prevention at Hopkins. While there, “I met all the folks who influenced my career. Hopkins quickly became the top of my list [for her PhD].” Pollack earned her PhD in 2005 and left Hopkins for about a year for postdoctoral work. She returned to the Bloomberg school as the third person to hold an endowed careerdevelopment chair in injury prevention, a 3 year position. She is now an associate professor of health policy and management and is affiliated with the injury research and policy centre. “I have found that no matter what you want to study or learn about in public health, somebody at Bloomberg is doing it”, says Pollack. Another Hopkins public health school first is its academic programme in international health, which was launched in 1961 by Timothy Baker and, since 2013, has been chaired by David Peters. ”From the beginning”, Peters says, “the focus was on addressing the problems of disadvantaged people, this notion of promoting justice and equity”—an ethos that no doubt remains at the heart of the school as it looks towards its next century of improving public health.
Rita Rubin www.thelancet.com Vol 387 June 11, 2016