About Public Health

In 2008, Bradley Stoner (MD, PhD) and colleagues at Washington University responded to a rising demand for an undergraduate public health curriculum by creating the Public Health Minor. In just one year, the program has grown to over 40 students, with more declaring every week. The Minor is administered by the Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences and is a programmatic extension of the Medicine and Society program, a popular four-year track in health and social science for premedical and pre-health students in Arts & Sciences. Taken together, the Medicine and Society four-year track and the new undergraduate Minor in Public Health represent a major expansion of undergraduate instruction in the fundamental bases of health and wellness in human communities.

Studying public health is important because it provides students with a population-level perspective on health and wellness, and provides an opportunity to address key societal concerns such as health equity and social justice. A multi-disciplinary approach insures that the student who completes the minor in public health will be well-prepared to proceed to the graduate level in public health or any number of related fields.

The Public Health minor in Arts & Sciences is one of a number of new public health initiatives at Washington University, which also include the Institute for Public Health, as well as a new master’s-level training program in public health sponsored by the George Warren Brown School of Social Work.  Professor Stoner and Professor Benson are Scholars of Washington University’s Institute for Public Health and their research address areas of key concern for improving the health of communities at home and abroad.