Leaders Through the School's History
C.-E. A. Winslow, MS, DrPH (Hon.) Founding Chair 1915-1945
Ira V. Hiscock, MA, ScD, MPH, Chair 1945-1960
Anthony M.-M. Payne, MD, M.R.C.P., Chair 1960-1966
Edward M. Cohart, MD, Chair 1966-1968
Adrian M. Ostfeld, MD, MA, Chair 1968-1969
Robert W. McCollum, MD, Chair 1969-1981
Colin White, M.B.B.S., Chair 1981-1982
Jan A.J. Stolwijk, PhD, Chair 1982-1989, Acting Chair 1994-1995
Stolwijk was an associate fellow and then a fellow of the John B. Pierce Laboratory from 1957 to 1974 and associate director from 1974 to 1989. He was the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Public Health. His research was in occupational health and indoor air pollution, and he wrote the first digital computer program to model heat flow in the human body for the NASA space program in 1966, in what became known as “The Stolwijk Model." Stolwijk also pioneered research on “sick building syndrome,” indoor air pollution, non-ionizing radiation, and other environmental health topics.
Burton H. Singer, MS, PhD, Associate Dean & Chair, 1989-1993
Nancy H. Ruddle, PhD, Acting Chair 1993-1994, 2002
Theodore Holford, PhD, Acting Chair 2001
Michael H. Merson, MD, Dean & Chair 1995 - 2004
Brian P. Leaderer, PhD, MPH, Interim Dean & Chair 2005-2006
Dr. Leaderer is the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor and Deputy Dean of the Yale School of Public Health, Vice-Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health in the Yale School of Medicine, Professor of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Co-Director of the Yale Center for Perinatal, Pediatric and Environmental Epidemiology (CPPEE).
Dr. Leaderer’s research over the past three decades has been interdisciplinary in nature, focusing on assessing exposures to air contaminants, found indoors and outdoors, and assessing the health impact resulting from those exposures in epidemiological studies of sensitive at risk populations. Dr. Leaderer’s work includes assessing emissions from sources, developing monitoring methods and applying modeling techniques (CMAQ modeling, traffic models, land use, satellite data, etc.) to better assess the temporal and spatial distribution of pollutant concentrations and in formulating strategies to assess exposures in epidemiologic studies.
Paul D. Cleary, PhD, Dean & Chair 2006-2017
Dr. Cleary's earliest work focused on studies of health behavior. He conducted theoretical and empirical research on smoking as well as patients’ perceptions and responses to physical symptoms and factors affecting use of medical care. He also studied the recognition and management of conditions such as mental illness, alcohol abuse and functional impairment in primary care settings. Dr. Cleary has been actively involved in research focused on persons infected with HIV and has investigated the ways in which infection affects people’s lives and the factors affecting the quality of medical care for infected persons. He is currently Principal Investigator of the Yale Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) as well as one of the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) projects funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to develop information gathering surveys for consumers regarding their health plans and services.
Sten H. Vermund, MD, PhD, Dean, 2017-2022
Melinda Pettigrew, PhD, Interim Dean, 2022-2023
As Interim Dean, Pettigrew led the YSPH independence transition planning team and worked closely with leaders across Yale to solidify YSPH’s finances, operations, and academic programs in preparation for independence. She launched the Office of Academic Affairs in 2017 and held several leadership positions at YSPH, including Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Deputy Dean. Pettigrew was the Anna M. R. Lauder Professor of Epidemiology and an internationally recognized infectious disease epidemiologist whose research focused on the global threat of antibiotic resistance. She was a passionate and award-winning educator and developed the flagship course, Principles of Infectious Diseases I, for her home academic department, Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases.