Vol. 2 No. 1 Specials

For the past ninety years, the American educational system has maintained a sharp distinction between undergraduate and graduate public health education. Schools of public health have always been exclusively categorized as graduate institutions, leaving little academic opportunity for undergraduates to pursue health-related interests. In part, this tradition can be traced to the original function of public health schools, which served as sister institutions to pre-existing medical schools. The logic of this pairing is clear: both schools aim to produce graduate-level health professionals to assume leadership roles in health-related fields.

Today, however, a number of forces are working to unite public health studies with traditional liberal arts curricula. Events ranging from the current tsunami disaster, to the bioterrorism scare of 2001, to the worldwide AIDS epidemic have sparked interest in public health issues among undergraduates as well as the general public. In the first years of the twenty-first century, we are bombarded on a daily basis with events pertaining to public health, events which often inspire frustration as we helplessly follow tragedies, lacking the relevant skills or careers to help in such situations.

Medical schools have for some time now appreciated the need to attract students with intellectual backgrounds that go beyond the traditional pre-med science track. Many schools have expanded the types of baccalaureate degrees they consider appropriate from prospective applicants, reaping the benefits of a more intellectually diverse student body. By broadening admission guidelines to consider majors in the humanities, medical schools have found that more of their students demonstrate the creativity and flexibility so important to the medical profession, particularly medical research.

More generally, public health education should be seen as a natural extension of the current American trend of promoting interdisciplinary study. Public health incorporates disciplines across the academic spectrum, from chemistry to political science to history. Dr. Douglas Weed, an oncologist at the National Cancer Institute, is a strong advocate of viewing epidemiology and public health as a form of liberal arts education. He writes that “in judging the suitability of a discipline for undergraduate study, one should look for the essential characteristics of the liberal arts, namely the fields that help free students from the limitations of prior beliefs and experiences and that teach important modes of thinking so as to prepare them to ask and answer new questions.” In integrating the social and biological sciences, and in forcing students to challenge pre-existing methods and rapidly respond to changing circumstances, public health well satisfies the aims of an undergraduate liberal arts major, and it provides a strong foundation for a wide variety of postgraduate studies.