With you, WashU improves the well-being of people and the planet through our new School of Public Health and interdisciplinary scholarship that combines environmental and population health science.
At WashU, we seek to ensure a thriving planet and populace. Building flourishing communities means protecting biodiversity and improving air and water quality, locally and around the world. It means addressing socioeconomic inequities that contribute to poorer health outcomes based on zip code, race, or gender. It means planning for future pandemics and mitigating infectious disease.
We will catalyze these efforts through our School of Public Health — founded on unprecedented interdisciplinary collaboration. We will draw on our formidable public health expertise at the Brown School and WashU Medicine as well as our Center for the Environment and other areas across campus. And we will enthusiastically partner with our passionate and dedicated WashU community. Together with your engagement and philanthropy, we can accelerate the pace at which public health insights inform and improve care. We can strengthen the way experts communicate about health. We can devise creative solutions to persistent global challenges. With you, this is what WashU can do.
Slide
“By designing techniques capable of detecting patterns or correlations or structural relationships in seemingly random, stochastic data, I can try to ascertain how environmental factors might shape human health outcomes. Is weather related to Western Nile virus outbreaks? Does pollution affect the birth weight? Could long-term exposures play a role in aging or even Alzheimer’s disease? The answers to those questions can guide interventions.”
_
Bo Li
Stanley A. Sawyer Professor of Statistics & Data Science
“What excites me is that I’m contributing to a larger movement toward global justice and gender justice. We’re helping leaders in other countries gain knowledge and training to advocate for the needs they recognize in their own communities.”
“The classes at Brown School really broadened my perspective on social work and its many career paths beyond direct practice and counseling. Social work prepares you for so much—human resources, management, leading a nonprofit or national organization, even working in tribal government or museums.”
_
Kerry Bird, MSW ’98
Director of the North Carolina American Indian Heritage Commission
“My vision for the future is that your ZIP code will not be a strong predictor for your health outcomes — a future where a baby born in any neighborhood has a fair opportunity to be well.”
_
Doneisha Bohannon, MPH ’14
Director of Community Health Initiatives,
BJC HealthCare
“About 15 to 20% of our locations are in traditional food deserts. It’s just an integral part of our business model: to lower the cost of serving healthy food. There is real value in putting our fridges into places where there are not a lot of other options. There’s business value and public health value.”
WashU’s wide-ranging efforts to improve the health of populations and our planet include the Food and Agriculture Research Mission (FARM). With the generous partnership of the Lauren and Lee Fixel Family Foundation, FARM addresses pressing challenges at the intersection of agriculture and public health, from malnutrition to climate change.
