- December 09, 2025
Yale School of Public Health’s PopHIVE project will expand health data access thanks to major grant
- December 03, 2025Source: Yale News
Startup Yale celebrates a decade of transforming innovation into impact
- July 21, 2025
New YSPH Pilot Grants Support Innovative Interdisciplinary Research
- May 13, 2025Source: Yale School of Management
Innovating with Integrity at the Yale Healthcare Conference
Innovating for the Public Good
Yale School of Public Health innovates solutions to many public health problems, including chronic diseases, social inequality, climate change, pandemic threats, and gun violence.
YSPH’s innovations have the potential to change the world, one community at a time. Our faculty, students, alumni, and staff solve hard problems, working with community partners to develop and sustain solutions over time.
Public Health Innovators Video Series
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Meet YSPH faculty members, staff, students, and alumni who are pursuing innovative research and projects, from cancer diagnosis to medication adherence, to supporting future innovators at YSPH and beyond.
This video series highlights innovators who are featured in our digital magazine, Yale Public Health: Innovating for the Public Good.
Public Health Innovators: Jeffrey Townsend on What Causes Cancer Cancer patients often want to know, "Why did I get cancer?"
"Just recently, we've been able to answer that question by doing tumor sequencing," says Jeffrey Townsend, Yale’s Elihu Professor of Biostatistics and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. "And it's the kind of innovation that hopefully will be helpful in improving public health by being able to tell people why they're getting ill... and for having those people pass that information on to those they love so that they can better understand what they can do to prevent the same ills from affecting them."
The innovation also has the potential to help us understand cancer hotspots, where individuals get cancer at higher rates.
Public Health Innovators: Kaakpema "KP" Yelpaala on Equitable Innovating "We have no shortage of innovations that can improve public health and wellbeing for millions and millions and millions of people," says Kaakpema "KP" Yelpaala, faculty director of InnovateHealth Yale and Senior Fellow and Lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health. "But I think the big opportunity is to really think about how to tailor those solutions equitably to everybody."
In Yelpaala's entrepreneurial experience, he has founded two companies: access.mobile, which worked on digital transformation of healthcare service delivery in African countries, and InOn Health, which uses the power of mobile phones and texting to better connect people to care.
“I think, in public health, there are lots of ways we can support more inclusive design and more equitable innovation, and it's not always about what we say are the sexy gadgets, but there is existing technology which can be used in really novel ways to connect people to care,” he says.
Public Health Innovators: Leslie Asanga, Founder of Pills2Me Pills2Me is a Yale School of Public Health innovation success story. The company received its initial support and funding in 2020 from InnovateHealth Yale, YSPH’s social entrepreneurship program, and was recently named one of the U.S. recipients of the Google for Startups Black and Latino Founders Fund for 2023.
Leslie Asanga, Advanced Professional MPH ’20, is a pharmacist and the founder and CEO of Pills2Me, a technology startup that increases medication adherence through on-demand prescription delivery and medication therapy management. With the cash award as well as mentoring support from Google, Asanga is expanding his team and scaling up the Pills2Me business, with plans to expand to more U.S. cities. The plan is to eventually be a household name nationwide.
Public Health Innovators: Nathaniel Raymond on Cutting-Edge Humanitarian Research The Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab is at the cutting edge of integrating together open source data, such as social media and videos online, combined with commercially acquired satellite imagery to be able to assess, document, and sometimes warn in real time about threats to civilian populations.
This innovative humanitarian work supports accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity, says Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the lab. In 2022, they helped identify where tens of thousands of missing children from Ukraine were inside Russia.
"Innovation is a necessity for public health and the future of the field because public health itself began with innovation, from the first smallpox vaccine to the days of John Snow and the Broad Street Pump, and identifying the roots of cholera," says Raymond.
Public Health Innovators: Fatema Basrai, Managing Director of InnovateHealth Yale "The world's most pressing issues demand our attention, and innovation is a way for us to think outside of the box and come up with solutions in a way that is faster, more efficient, and allows us to solve problems with greater success," says Fatema Basrai, Managing Director of InnovateHealth Yale.
In this video, she discusses the work and successes of InnovateHealth Yale, one of the only dedicated innovation programs at a school of public health. The program's alumni include the founders of KovaDx, which uses machine learning to analyze red blood cells to help screen for disease, and Brio, which is a mental health platform that uses community-led models of care.
Public Health Innovators of the Yale School of Public Health Public Health Innovators: Jeffrey Townsend on What Causes Cancer Cancer patients often want to know, "Why did I get cancer?"
"Just recently, we've been able to answer that question by doing tumor sequencing," says Jeffrey Townsend, Yale’s Elihu Professor of Biostatistics and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. "And it's the kind of innovation that hopefully will be helpful in improving public health by being able to tell people why they're getting ill... and for having those people pass that information on to those they love so that they can better understand what they can do to prevent the same ills from affecting them."
The innovation also has the potential to help us understand cancer hotspots, where individuals get cancer at higher rates.
Public Health Innovators: Kaakpema "KP" Yelpaala on Equitable Innovating "We have no shortage of innovations that can improve public health and wellbeing for millions and millions and millions of people," says Kaakpema "KP" Yelpaala, faculty director of InnovateHealth Yale and Senior Fellow and Lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health. "But I think the big opportunity is to really think about how to tailor those solutions equitably to everybody."
In Yelpaala's entrepreneurial experience, he has founded two companies: access.mobile, which worked on digital transformation of healthcare service delivery in African countries, and InOn Health, which uses the power of mobile phones and texting to better connect people to care.
“I think, in public health, there are lots of ways we can support more inclusive design and more equitable innovation, and it's not always about what we say are the sexy gadgets, but there is existing technology which can be used in really novel ways to connect people to care,” he says.
Public Health Innovators: Leslie Asanga, Founder of Pills2Me Pills2Me is a Yale School of Public Health innovation success story. The company received its initial support and funding in 2020 from InnovateHealth Yale, YSPH’s social entrepreneurship program, and was recently named one of the U.S. recipients of the Google for Startups Black and Latino Founders Fund for 2023.
Leslie Asanga, Advanced Professional MPH ’20, is a pharmacist and the founder and CEO of Pills2Me, a technology startup that increases medication adherence through on-demand prescription delivery and medication therapy management. With the cash award as well as mentoring support from Google, Asanga is expanding his team and scaling up the Pills2Me business, with plans to expand to more U.S. cities. The plan is to eventually be a household name nationwide.
Public Health Innovators: Nathaniel Raymond on Cutting-Edge Humanitarian Research The Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab is at the cutting edge of integrating together open source data, such as social media and videos online, combined with commercially acquired satellite imagery to be able to assess, document, and sometimes warn in real time about threats to civilian populations.
This innovative humanitarian work supports accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity, says Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the lab. In 2022, they helped identify where tens of thousands of missing children from Ukraine were inside Russia.
"Innovation is a necessity for public health and the future of the field because public health itself began with innovation, from the first smallpox vaccine to the days of John Snow and the Broad Street Pump, and identifying the roots of cholera," says Raymond.
Public Health Innovators: Fatema Basrai, Managing Director of InnovateHealth Yale "The world's most pressing issues demand our attention, and innovation is a way for us to think outside of the box and come up with solutions in a way that is faster, more efficient, and allows us to solve problems with greater success," says Fatema Basrai, Managing Director of InnovateHealth Yale.
In this video, she discusses the work and successes of InnovateHealth Yale, one of the only dedicated innovation programs at a school of public health. The program's alumni include the founders of KovaDx, which uses machine learning to analyze red blood cells to help screen for disease, and Brio, which is a mental health platform that uses community-led models of care.
Public Health Innovators of the Yale School of Public Health Public Health Innovators: Jeffrey Townsend on What Causes Cancer Cancer patients often want to know, "Why did I get cancer?"
"Just recently, we've been able to answer that question by doing tumor sequencing," says Jeffrey Townsend, Yale’s Elihu Professor of Biostatistics and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. "And it's the kind of innovation that hopefully will be helpful in improving public health by being able to tell people why they're getting ill... and for having those people pass that information on to those they love so that they can better understand what they can do to prevent the same ills from affecting them."
The innovation also has the potential to help us understand cancer hotspots, where individuals get cancer at higher rates.
Public Health Innovators: Kaakpema "KP" Yelpaala on Equitable Innovating "We have no shortage of innovations that can improve public health and wellbeing for millions and millions and millions of people," says Kaakpema "KP" Yelpaala, faculty director of InnovateHealth Yale and Senior Fellow and Lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health. "But I think the big opportunity is to really think about how to tailor those solutions equitably to everybody."
In Yelpaala's entrepreneurial experience, he has founded two companies: access.mobile, which worked on digital transformation of healthcare service delivery in African countries, and InOn Health, which uses the power of mobile phones and texting to better connect people to care.
“I think, in public health, there are lots of ways we can support more inclusive design and more equitable innovation, and it's not always about what we say are the sexy gadgets, but there is existing technology which can be used in really novel ways to connect people to care,” he says.
Public Health Innovators: Leslie Asanga, Founder of Pills2Me Pills2Me is a Yale School of Public Health innovation success story. The company received its initial support and funding in 2020 from InnovateHealth Yale, YSPH’s social entrepreneurship program, and was recently named one of the U.S. recipients of the Google for Startups Black and Latino Founders Fund for 2023.
Leslie Asanga, Advanced Professional MPH ’20, is a pharmacist and the founder and CEO of Pills2Me, a technology startup that increases medication adherence through on-demand prescription delivery and medication therapy management. With the cash award as well as mentoring support from Google, Asanga is expanding his team and scaling up the Pills2Me business, with plans to expand to more U.S. cities. The plan is to eventually be a household name nationwide.
Public Health Innovators: Nathaniel Raymond on Cutting-Edge Humanitarian Research The Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab is at the cutting edge of integrating together open source data, such as social media and videos online, combined with commercially acquired satellite imagery to be able to assess, document, and sometimes warn in real time about threats to civilian populations.
This innovative humanitarian work supports accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity, says Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the lab. In 2022, they helped identify where tens of thousands of missing children from Ukraine were inside Russia.
"Innovation is a necessity for public health and the future of the field because public health itself began with innovation, from the first smallpox vaccine to the days of John Snow and the Broad Street Pump, and identifying the roots of cholera," says Raymond.
Public Health Innovators: Fatema Basrai, Managing Director of InnovateHealth Yale "The world's most pressing issues demand our attention, and innovation is a way for us to think outside of the box and come up with solutions in a way that is faster, more efficient, and allows us to solve problems with greater success," says Fatema Basrai, Managing Director of InnovateHealth Yale.
In this video, she discusses the work and successes of InnovateHealth Yale, one of the only dedicated innovation programs at a school of public health. The program's alumni include the founders of KovaDx, which uses machine learning to analyze red blood cells to help screen for disease, and Brio, which is a mental health platform that uses community-led models of care.
Public Health Innovators of the Yale School of Public Health
Yale Public Health magazine
The latest Yale Public Health magazine features many of YSPH’s latest innovations.