U.S. News and World Report has ranked Yale University as one of the ten “Best Global Universities for Social Sciences and Public Health.”
In addition to its recent new rankings of Best Global Universities, the U.S. News and World Report included rankings of leaders in key academic subject areas. The subject rankings are based on criteria such as academic research publications, citations, international collaboration, reputation and number of PhD degrees awarded. Yale University ranked 17th in the overall global ranking and 10th for social sciences and public health.
The rankings encompass 500 institutions among 49 countries.
Yale University and the Yale School of Public Health have steadily expanded international activity over the last five years. In 2009, the School of Public Health retooled its global health curriculum so that M.P.H. students in any department or division could enroll in the Global Health Concentration and develop their expertise to encompass the skills and perspective to work in the global arena. To date, 135 students have graduated from this program.
Also in 2009, the Yale Global Health Initiative (GHI) was launched to cultivate and support global health activities across the University. Reflecting its campus-wide reach, it is centered at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, part of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. Directed by Elizabeth Bradley, professor of Public Health, GHI fosters education programs, interdisciplinary faculty research, advances international partnerships and leadership in global health, and provides opportunities for students to engage in this work.
“Student and faculty enthusiasm for global health motivates the University’s commitment to foster educational innovation and catalyze interdisciplinary efforts in the field,” said Elizabeth Bradley, Ph.D. “A distinguishing characteristic of global health at Yale is the focus on leadership development. We try to have students ask the big questions, identify leverage points for positive change and think about the larger ethical questions that are at the root of human development. We seek the best of both worlds — disciplinary depth and interdisciplinary breadth.”
In the School of Public Health alone, 36 ladder-track faculty members are collaborating in 43 countries in areas as diverse as health care systems leadership and management, neglected tropical diseases and emerging chronic disease issues in low- and middle income countries. The School has established research partnership agreements with universities in Russia, China and Brazil and has a history of developing worldwide research capacity through its involvement with the Fogarty International Program of the National Institutes of Health.
“It is gratifying to see that the U.S. News and World Report rankings reflect the growing emphasis at YSPH and across the entire University on addressing global health issues, said, Paul D. Cleary, Dean of the Yale School of Public Health. We only began working on our strategy to revitalize global health research and education about 8 years ago, and it is exciting to see how quickly that work has expanded and how great an impact it is having throughout the world. The U.S. News and World Report ranking uses absolute numbers (e.g., of publications), which favors universities, so I am delighted that as a small school we can have such a big impact.”
The Yale School of Public Health was founded by C.-E. A. Winslow in 1915 as a department in the School of Medicine. The program was among the first accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health in 1946. There are currently 255 M.P.H students, 75 Ph.D. students and 28 M.S. students enrolled in its programs; nearly 30 percent are international students.