Department of Population Health Sciences Marks 50th Anniversary

Public health researchers recently raised a toast to the health of Wisconsin - and the world - at a symposium to honor the 50th anniversary of the Department of Population Health Sciences. Nearly 300 people came to campus in August 2009 to celebrate.

 

Consider just a few of the many highlights of the past half century:

• Contributions to the health of Wisconsin via historic studies that isolated the La Crosse encephalitis virus and defined the disease commonly known as farmer's lung, a major public health concern in the Dairy State, up to the current Survey of the Health of Wisconsin (SHOW)
• Contributions to the health of the state and nation through publications such as the County Health Rankings, now being expanded to give counties across the entire country a health report card
• Contributions to understanding complex health issues that become apparent only in large population studies, such as the landmark Wisconsin Sleep Cohort, the Beaver Dam Offspring Study, the Epidemiology of Hearing Loss Study, SHOW, the Wisconsin Diabetes Registry, the Newborn Lung Project, the Collaborative Breast Cancer Study, a site for the Women's Health Initiative and the Wisconsin vanguard site of the National Children's Survey
• Contributions to global health through programs such as the Certificate in Global Health

Department's Roots Can be Traced to 1903

 

While the department officially began its life as the Department of Preventive Medicine in 1959, its roots go back more than a century to the founding of the Wisconsin "hygienic laboratory" on campus in 1903. W.D. Stovall, MD, served as laboratory director for 40 years. During his time, the UW Medical School recognized the public health work of the laboratory by creating a preventive medicine division in the Department of Medicine.

 

At the August symposium to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Department of Population Health Sciences, alumna Kirstie Danielson (PhD ‘07) shares her work with public health researchers from around the country.

The Department of Preventive Medicine got its start focusing on the occupational health of Wisconsin workers. Medical students from that era will remember courses in infectious and chronic diseases taught by the department's first chair, Alfred Evans, MD, MPH, which had titles such as "Wheezes, Sneezes and Other Diseases."

 

All physicians know of the modified "Rankin Scale," which was devised in Scotland to assess the disability of patients who had suffered strokes. Its inventor, John Rankin, MD, had studied at Wisconsin in 1947 and returned in the 1950s. 

 

One biographer suggested that despite Rankin's many accomplishments in stroke neurology, he became frustrated by treating the aftermath of a preventable disease. Once permanently in Madison, he switched research interests and became an expert in pulmonary physiology. He also had a vision for the Department of Preventive Medicine, which he helped create and chaired from 1968 to 1981.

 

"Rankin's idea was to create a new school of public health, so he brought in health economists, epidemiologists, statisticians, sociologists and health policy experts," says professor Jerome Dempsey, PhD, one of Rankin's graduate students and longtime director of the Rankin Laboratory of Pulmonary Medicine.

 

The new faculty complemented pulmonary physiologists like Dempsey, bringing the department into an era full of fruitful collaborations.

 

One example is the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort, which combined the interests of pulmonologists with the skills of epidemiologists such as Terry Young, PhD. Their landmark paper linking sleep apnea to hypertension would become one of the most cited articles in the New England Journal of Medicine. The cohort, which began sleeping for science in 1988, continues today.

 

Other long-ranging, federally funded studies based in the department were:

• A long-term follow-up study of type 1 diabetes by Donn D'Alessio, MD
• A long-term follow-up study of premature newborns by Mari Palta, PhD
• A study of hearing by Karen Cruickshanks, PhD
• A study of breast cancer by Amy Trentham-Dietz, PhD

Maureen Durkin PhD, DrPH, co-directs the Wisconsin portion of the newly under way National Children's Study.

 

On the teaching side, the department added programs in epidemiology, health administration and administrative medicine. During D'Alessio's tenure as chair, which began in 1981, the department restructured its three master degree programs into the MS/PhD Population Health Graduate Program in 1997.

 

The following year the department was mostly geographically unified by its move to the WARF building, although research programs requiring wet labs remained in other buildings.

 

The department took on its new name, Population Health Sciences, in 2001, just as the medical school began its transformation into a school of medicine and public health under the leadership of former dean Philip Farrell, MD, PhD.

 

F. Javier Nieto, MD, MPH, PhD, took over as chair in 2002, the same year the department was named one of six institutions to house the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars Program for postdoctoral researchers.

 

Meanwhile, department faculty helped land the $42 million federal grant that founded the UW Institute for Clinical and Translational Research; Maureen Smith, MD, PhD, now directs the institute's community-academic partnership branch.  

 

Population health sciences faculty also were involved in launching the Wisconsin Partnership Program's public health initiative, including the recently accredited Master of Public Health program.

 

On the service side, affiliated units such as the Population Health Institute contribute to Wisconsin's healthcare policy debate and that of the nation through its regular Issue Briefs, conferences and forums.

 

Department Plays a Key Role in School's Transformation

 

Patrick Remington, MD '81, MPH, who was recently named associate dean for public health at the school, applauded the theme chosen for the anniversary symposium by the scientific program chairs, "Providing Evidence for Clinical Practice and Public Health." It reflects the school's mission to use scientifically based evidence to create a healthier population, "ruthlessly assessing the quality of evidence to make sure we find programs and policies that really work," notes Remington.

 

Looking forward, he says the work of transforming the school - and its future physicians and public health professionals - will continue.

 

"We're trying to bring the population medicine approach to all students by incorporating public health into all aspects of the curriculum," Remington says.

 

All of this couldn't have happened at a better place, says Nieto.

 

"UW-Madison offers unique opportunities for rigorous research and training of professionals to address the determinants of health in populations and individuals," he says.

 

And so we can all raise a toast to the department, and to our own health. As the Italians say, "Salute Cent'anni," - one hundred years of good health.

 

By Susan Lampert Smith

This article appears in the fall 2009 issue of Quarterly.

Date Published: 11/11/2009