Originally named the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, the school was founded in 1916 by William H. Welch with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the second school of public health in the U.S. after Tulane University. The school was renamed the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on April 20, 2001, in honor of Michael Bloomberg (founder of the eponymous media company) for his financial support and commitment to the school and Johns Hopkins University. Bloomberg has donated a total of $2.9 billion to Johns Hopkins University over a period of several decades.
In 1913, the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored a conference on the need for public health education in the United States. Foundation officials were convinced that a new profession of public health was needed. It would be allied to medicine but also distinct, with its own identity and educational institutions.[12] The result of deliberations between public health leaders and foundation officials was the Welch–Rose Report of 1915, which laid out the need for adequately trained public health workers, and envisioned an "institute of hygiene" for the United States.[13] The report reflected the different preferences of the plan's two architects—William Henry Welch favored scientific research, whereas Wickliffe Rose wanted an emphasis on public health practice.[12]
In June 1916, the executive committee of the Rockefeller Foundation approved the plan to organize an institute or school of public health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. The institute was named the School of Hygiene and Public Health, indicating a compromise between those who wanted the practical public health training on the British model and those who favored basic scientific research on the German model.[13] Welch, the first dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, also became the founding dean of the first school of public health in the United States.
The facility is located on the former Maryland Hospital site founded in 1797. The Maryland Hospital was originally built as a hospital to care for Yellow Fever for the indigent away from the city. In 1840, the hospital expanded to exclusively care for the mentally ill. In 1873, the buildings were torn down as the facility relocated to a new site as the Spring Grove Hospital Center.[14]
The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health represents the archetype for formalized public health training and epidemiology education in the United States. By 1922, other schools of public health at Harvard, Columbia and Yale had all been established in accordance with the Hopkins model.[15] The Rockefeller Foundation continued to sponsor the creation of public health schools in the United States and around the world in the 1920s and 1930s, extending the American model of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health to countries such as Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Czechoslovakia, England, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Turkey, and Yugoslavia.[13]
The official title of the head of the school has changed periodically between director and dean throughout the years.[16] Originally the title was director. In 1931, it was changed to dean and in 1946 back to director. In 1958, the title again became dean. The directors and deans of the Bloomberg School include:
The Bloomberg School is the largest school of public health in the world, with 875 primary and 833 affiliated faculty, and 3,639 students from 97 countries.[17] It is home to over 80 research centers and institutes with research ongoing in the U.S. and more than 60 countries worldwide.[18] The school ranks first in federal research support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), receives nearly 25 percent of all funds distributed among the 40 U.S. schools of public health,[17] and has consistently been ranked first among schools of public health by U.S. News & World Report.[19] The school is ranked second for public health in the world by EduRank and Shanghai Rankings, behind the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.[20]
Epidemiology: has the largest overall postdoctoral training program in the School of Public Health.[28] Many postdoctoral fellows and predoctoral trainees (master's level and doctoral level degree students) are supported by NIH-funded training programs.[29] Affiliated centers and institutes include George W. Comstock Center for Public Health Research and Prevention and the Wendy Klag Center for Autism and Developmental Disabilities.
The Bloomberg School of Public Health is located in the East Baltimore campus of the Johns Hopkins University. The campus, collectively known as the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions[32] (JHMI), is also home to the School of Medicine and the School of Nursing and comprises several city blocks, radiating outwards from the Billings Building of the Johns Hopkins Hospital with its historic dome. The main building on which the school is located is on North Wolfe Street; it has nine floors and features an observation area and a fitness center on the top floor. The Bloomberg School also occupies Hampton House on North Broadway. The school is also serviced by the Welch Medical Library, a central resource shared by all the schools of the Medical Campus. The campus includes the Lowell Reed Residence Hall[33] and the Denton Cooley Recreational Center.[34] Public transportation to and from the campus is served by the Baltimore Metro Subway, local buses, and the JHMI shuttle.[35]
Dorry Segev, Israeli-born Marjory K. and Thomas Pozefsky Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Professor of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Associate Vice Chair of the Department of Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital
^Education of the Physician: International Dimensions. Education Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates., Association of American Medical Colleges. Meeting. (1984 : Chicago, Ill), p. v.
^Milton Terris, "The Profession of Public Health", Conference on Education, Training, and the Future of Public Health. March 22–24, 1987. Board on Health Care Services. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, p. 53.
^Cecil G. Sheps (1973). "Schools of public health in transition". The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly. Health and Society. 51 (4): 462–468. doi:10.2307/3349628. JSTOR3349628.
