Mission and History

Mission Statement

New York University's Master's Program in Global Public Health will prepare professionals with advanced degrees from multiple disciplines to play leadership roles in promoting global health through improved research, practice, and policy-making.

The field of global public health addresses the broad array of issues in physical and mental health, encompassing both the long-term existent and the newly emergent. The growth of global demographic shifts and global economic relationships makes the health of all the world's people increasingly interdependent. Thus an increasing number of well-trained public health professionals with cross-national expertise are needed to improve disease surveillance, monitor health status, prevent disease, promote health, manage health care resources and devise policies to foster health system development and reform worldwide.

In response, five of the University's professional schools have collaborated in developing a program in Global Public Health that is committed to advance health knowledge and practice through research, education, and outreach. The graduates of this program will be uniquely qualified to lead multidisciplinary initiatives to enhance the health status of individuals and communities around the world.

History of Program

In 2002, a committee of faculty members from five professional schools at New York University began working to develop an innovative Master's Program in Global Public Health. The committee worked for two years, with strong support from the University, to develop a curriculum that would prepare professionals with advanced degrees from multiple disciplines to play leadership roles in promoting global health. This program embodies the University's commitment to an "enterprise model", where cross-school collaborations will produce new paradigms in research, education and public service. The Master's Program in Global Public Health, as NYU's first university-level degree program, belonging to no one school, is a prototype of a new model for higher education.

The program received New York State approval in late 2004. At this time, faculty co-directors were appointed and a faculty governance group formed, with representation from all participating schools, to complete planning for the program.

The program's first students began their course of study in September, 2006.