Dean's Office
Overview
A Message From the Dean
The focus of public health is grounded in:
- promotion of healthy environments and lifestyles
- improved design and management of our health system
- focused attention on vulnerable populations, and
- a need to discover better, more effective and efficient ways to prevent disease.
The USF College of Public Health is committed to providing state-of-the-art training to students and post-doctoral fellows in the methods and topics that will achieve health for all. Our research programs seek to learn how to better prevent and control disease in community and healthcare settings. College outreach is focused on partnerships with community-based organizations, local and state health departments, and national and global entities that seek to address the myriad causes and determinants of disease.
An exciting element of our discipline is just how interdisciplinary it is. We find ourselves working with urban planners for design of parks and sidewalks to enhance exercise. We engage policymakers and healthcare professionals to examine costs, patient care quality, and innovations in systems. We study the biological and societal underpinnings of important local and global diseases that may be infectious, nutritional, or lifestyle related. Discovery science, implementation science, and applied science are weaved into our school’s fabric to find better ways to protect health across the lifespan, from pregnancy through childhood into aging. Assaults to the public’s health can come from the obvious, as from a hurricane or a vaccine-preventable disease, or the hidden, as with salt-laden foods and persons lacking adequate health insurance. In public health, we seek solutions by preventing the cause, adapting to the threat, or mitigating the consequences.
We welcome you to this journey of study and application. Prevention of illness and disease is a universal goal, shared by persons of every background or political persuasion. And few careers are as satisfying as one focused on prevention by promoting health and healthcare in our state, our nation, and our planet.
Sten Vermund, MD, PhD
USF-headquartered Global Virus Network issues urgent call on rising threat of H5N1 bird flu
The Global Virus Network published a comprehensive analysis of the H5N1 bird flu outbreak, calling on world governments to address the threat by enhancing surveillance, implementing biosecurity measures and preparing for potential human-to-human transmission.
USF-headquartered Global Virus Network issues urgent call on rising threat of H5N1 bird flu
H5N1: How worried should we be?
Experts from USF Health and the Global Virus Network discuss the current avian influenza outbreak in poultry, dairy cattle and wild birds.
H5N1: How worried should we be?
New COPH dean embraces local and global challenges facing public health
As Dr. Sten Vermund, MD, PhD, takes over this month as the new dean of USF’s College of Public Health (COPH), he brings more than deep experience in infectious disease epidemiology and prevention. The whirlwind of global change in disease, climate, technology, politics and economies is reshaping the future of health and exposing new challenges that he believes should be confronted head on.