By Ana V. Diez Roux, MD, PhD, MPH

As 2019 comes to an end, we have put together a list of highlights to share some of the exciting things that have happened at the Dornsife School of Public Health over the past year. We share only a few highlights as there are many, many exciting initiatives that our faculty, staff, and students are engaged in.

The work of Dornsife faculty, staff, and students over the past year includes a broad range of activities relevant to our public health mission, from partnering with the Philadelphia Department of Public Health to describe neighborhood differences in our city, to important new research projects (on the health of immigrants, mental health impacts of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, use of social media to prevent HPV, and medication risk factors for autism, to name a few), to joining the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health as co-editors of the Health and Human Rights Journal, to working with city leaders across Latin American to promote health and equitable cities.

Our faculty, staff, students, and alumni continue to receive important honors and recognition for their work. We had more than 100 presentations at the APHA meeting this year, and our faculty received several important awards.

We continue to work together to improve the quality of our educational programs and expand into new programs and modalities including launching the inaugural class of our Online Public Health Certificate this past fall and beginning recruitment for our first-ever Online MPH in Global Health class to begin in fall 2020.

Most importantly, we continue to work together to build and support an environment that supports and promotes inclusion, that values diversity in all its forms, and that strives for commitment and excellence in research, teaching, and service. In recognition of all the progress we have made, our School was recognized in 2019 as the top public health program in Philadelphia and placed in the top 20 programs among 120+ ranked programs in the nation.

All this would not be possible if it were not for the hard work and commitment of Dornsife faculty, staff, and students and our many friends and partners here in Philadelphia and beyond. I hope you will take a minute to review just a few of the things we have accomplished together.

Thank you all. I look forward to making 2020 an even better year for our School and to working together to make our city (and our world) healthier and more equitable for all.

I wish you all very happy holidays and a wonderful start to the year 2020.

View Dornsife’s 2019 Highlights