At once the blink of an eye and a long enough time for the whole world to change, we have just completed our first five years of instruction. On this anniversary, let’s review what we’ve accomplished and where we’re going.

Where We Started

Our Master of Public Health (MPH) Program was founded with the recognition that humanity’s greatest health challenges stem from the unsustainable ways we interact with the environment, and the inequitable ways we interact with each other. We also recognized a need to train public health professionals in new ways, directly engaging with external partners on the issues they are facing. We forecast growing needs for practitioners trained in infectious diseases, and in the complex food systems—from production through consumption—on which we depend.

These were our starting points, but are they still relevant in such a quickly changing world? Currently, the World Health Organization has declared two Public Health Emergencies of International Concern—COVID-19 and monkeypox—both linked with unsustainable food systems and harvest of wildlife. The invasion of Ukraine created global food shortages and economic crises, as did shutdowns related to COVID-19. Almost lost in the background, the health impacts of climate change grow increasingly severe. These diverse challenges share the common trait that their impacts are not felt equitably; instead, they impart the greatest burdens on the most vulnerable among us. In the face of these complex and growing threats, it is now even more apparent that we need to strengthen and expand the professional public health workforce, and that public health needs to consider sustainability and equity in all we do.

What We Have Accomplished

To begin making our contribution to professional public health training, we’ve already hired 20 faculty and 11 staff, and started building a network of partners around the world. Beyond these new hires, 100+ faculty from across Cornell and Weill Cornell Medicine take part in MPH instruction and activities, and literally hundreds more perform research and practice that advance public health. This team has worked tirelessly, developing a curriculum from scratch, achieving accreditation, and creating an environment of learning and doing for roughly 100 professional public health students each year. This represents a tremendous investment, designed to meet society’s needs for public health research, practice, and workforce training.

Is this investment paying off? Five years is a short time in which to judge returns, but let’s look at our activities in research, practice, and teaching. Cornell MPH faculty perform research not just to understand, but to help solve wicked problems. To highlight just a few examples: our identification of factors that help pathogens jump across species into people has led to new approaches to manage natural systems to protect human health. Our studies of how viruses enter cells have contributed to the discovery of a small molecule that might prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2. Research on climate change, biodiversity, human health, and nutrition has identified the critical need for improved freshwater fish management to support human health and livelihoods. Study of policies and how they perform in the face of crises and shocks has identified factors that protect vulnerable populations, versus those that keep them vulnerable.

We are equally committed to advancing public health through applied practice. Faculty and staff are actively engaged in more than 100 impact-focused projects, and all MPH students work with community partners locally and globally via course work, applied practice experiences, and capstone projects. Partnering with state and county health departments, community-based organizations, health systems, and local government, MPH students have meaningful opportunities to learn while producing deliverables of real value, on issues such as air quality, food insecurity, vector-borne diseases, and racism. Rising to the challenge of the pandemic, our faculty, staff, and students mobilized to lead and play critical roles in protecting community health on campus and beyond, performing testing services, filling critical support roles, and leading surveillance activities. Additionally, we provide essential training for New York State’s first-in-nation Public Health Corps, New York’s Public Health AmeriCorps, and to cooperative extension educators nationally, strengthening our workforce.

Over time, our greatest impacts will be through our remarkable and diverse students. Almost 60% of our U.S.-national students represent one or more of our priority populations. Of our graduates, 97% are employed or pursuing advanced training within a year of commencement, and over half of our graduates working in the U.S. are employed in organizations supporting medically underserved areas. Our growing numbers of alumni are employed by intergovernmental health authorities, national, state, and county health agencies and departments, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector, positioning themselves for lifetimes of impact.

Where We Are Going

Given this promising start, what do the next five years hold? As our foundation, we remain committed to principles of sustainability, equity and engagement, and to increasing our impacts even further. To do so, we have defined five goals.

We will:
1. Champion diversity in all its forms, recruiting, retaining, and supporting the success of students, staff, and faculty, so that we can generate the greatest public health impacts in our highly diverse state and country.
2. Grow at the intersections of sustainability and equity in areas of highest need for public health and wellbeing, including preventing, preparing for, and responding to population health emergencies of the future.
3. Create new workforce capacity with a focus on needed skills and upstream interventions that support health equity and social and environmental justice, including nature-based solutions.
4. Undertake and expand strategic partnerships both externally, and internally with Cornell’s Center for Pandemic Prevention and Response and the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, to broaden our scope of activities and range of impacts.
5. Create new academic structures and capacity to enable the transdisciplinary research and practice needed to ensure and promote the public’s health.

I am immensely proud of everything that our students, staff, and faculty accomplished in these first five years…but there is clearly much more to do! I hope you enjoy learning more about us through this report, and then join us in our mission to change the world!

Dr. Alexander Travis
Director, Master of Public Health Program
Chair, Department of Public & Ecosystem Health
Professor of Reproductive Biology