Mayo Memorial Building, main home of the School of Public Health
University of Minnesota School of Public Health
Mission
Through excellence in education, research and community engagement, the University of Minnesota School of Public Health advances health — from scientific discovery to public impact — by enhancing population health and preventing disease in the U.S. and globally.
The University of Minnesota School of Public Health (SPH) is located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a politically and socially progressive city, and it is fully accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health. In 2022, the school enrolled more than 1,000 students from 48 different countries. Its 123 full-time faculty members manage the #3 most highly funded research portfolio at the University of Minnesota.[1] Within 12 months of graduation, 99% of the school’s students are employed in their fields.
The school is principally located in the Mayo Memorial Building on the east bank of the Mississippi River, though many of its divisions and centers are located elsewhere on the University campus and the University Research and Outreach Center. The school was built within the traditional homelands of the Dakota people and the School of Public Health has the enduring responsibility to respect and support the Dakota people’s tribal rights.
In 2021 and in the wake of George Floyd’s murder fewer than five miles from the School of Public Health, the school launched its Strategic Plan for Antracism (SPAR) to actively make diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and antiracism central to the school’s operations, culture, and mission, and to help it live up to its guiding value that health is a human right. SPAR helps guide the school’s decision making, day-to-day operations, and planning for the future.
The School of Public Health is one of the only top ranked schools of public health between Chicago and Seattle. It has a close relationship with the Minnesota Department of Health and many Fortune 500 companies. Minnesota is the birthplace of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and many of the nation’s top healthcare organizations, including the Mayo Clinic, and medical device innovators, such as Medtronic. There is a natural, underlying current of health awareness and action across the state.
The School of Public Health is among only a handful of schools in the country that shares a campus with five other health sciences schools — nursing, dentistry, medicine, and veterinary medicine — giving students and faculty opportunities for collaboration and innovation with a diverse array of topic experts.
The school is home to more than 20 renowned research centers, including:
The School of Public Health has been among the nation’s top 10 public schools of public health since U.S. News and World Report began its rankings in 1984. In 2023, it ranked as the:
#6 public school of public health (#12 overall)
among the top 5% of schools and programs of public health
#2 Master of Healthcare Administration (MHA) program
In 1874, University of Minnesota (UMN) president William Watts Folwell named Dr. Charles N. Hewitt, a Civil War surgeon and secretary of the Minnesota State Board of Health, as the Non-Resident Professor of Public Health, likely the first U.S. academic appointment in the field. The UMN Board of Regents established the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health in 1922 as part of the Medical School and in 1931, it began offering public health correspondence courses free of charge to all Minnesotans. The department added biostatistics to its disciplines in 1936 and in 1940, it began offering an MPH degree.
In 1937, noted physiologist Ancel Keys founded the Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health. The lab became an internationally recognized research center for human physiology and nutrition. It was notable for developing K-Rations (“K” because it was phonetically distinct from other rations with letter names) and conducting the Minnesota Starvation Experiment in 1944-45 to shed light on the psychological and physical effects of starvation and best practices for rehabilitation.
In 1944, the University of Minnesota transformed the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health into the School of Public Health. Endowments from Drs. William and Charles Mayo in 1939 helped build the Mayo Memorial Building where the school is headquartered and their endowments also funded the Mayo Professorship in Public Health in 1946, the first fully endowed professorship at the University of Minnesota. Also in 1946, SPH became one of the first nine schools of public health to be accredited by the American Public Health Association. In that same year, the school became the first in the country to grant a master’s degree in hospital administration, a degree that became a master’s in healthcare administration (MHA) and one of the best in the country. In 1948, the school established the Mayo Chair in Public Health with funds from the Mayo Foundation.
In the 1950s, SPH founded the nation’s first doctoral program in epidemiology (1958) and began a series of major cardiovascular disease (CVD) studies, such as the U.S. Railroad Study, the first nationwide study of occupational activity and heart attacks, and the Seven Countries Study, the first population comparison of diet, risk factors, and rates of heart attack and stroke. (See more below.) Ancel Keys designed and ran the Seven Countries Study and because of its findings, Time magazine put Keys on its cover in 1961. The school’s strength in CVD research continued to grow over the following decades.
As the school added faculty and the world changed around it, new areas of school focus emerged, including tobacco use, maternal and child health, infectious diseases, and healthcare administration. Beginning in 1973, clinical trial design began building as a major strength of the school with its Coordinating Centers for Biometric Research (CCBR) and in 2022, CCBR garnered more NIH research funding than any other entity at the University of Minnesota. In 1997, the school established Project EAT, a research study with the goal of learning more about the broad spectrum of eating and weight-related problems in young people to guide interventions. Project EAT has since become the largest, most comprehensive longitudinal body of research to examine a broad array of weight-related outcomes from adolescence through adulthood. The school founded the Center for Aging, now the Center for Healthy Aging and Innovation (CHAI), in 1994 and the Division of Health Policy and Management (HPM) in 2005, both first-rate U.S. programs. Between 2015 and 2023, a dedication to equity saw the formation of such entities as the Health Equity Work Group, the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity (CARHE), and the first American Indian Public Health and Wellness Certificate in the country.
Shaping the future of health
Since its inception, the School of Public Health has become one of the best in the nation, known for top-ranked programs and seminal work in such areas as cardiovascular disease, nutrition, tobacco use and vaping, HIV/AIDs, injury and violence prevention, rural health, and structural racism.
The school has directed some of the most significant studies of heart-attack risk factors and prevention, with the first being the Seven Countries Study (1967–1978) whose findings disproved the notion that cardiovascular disease was a natural element of aging and is, instead, linked to lifestyle and diet, particularly a diet high in animal fat. Study findings were the basis for the Mediterranean Diet, considered among the healthiest in the world.
Clinical trials run from the school’s Coordinating Centers for Biometric Research (CCBR) broke new ground in cardiovascular disease research. The Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial (MRFIT), for example, which ran from 1973 to 1982, tested whether lowering elevated serum cholesterol and diastolic blood pressure and ceasing cigarette smoking would reduce coronary heart disease mortality. Two CCBR trials in the early 2000s, SMART and START, focused on when to administer antiretroviral treatment for HIV and changed protocols around the world.
The school’s work around tobacco use and vaping has had a significant impact on nationwide trends. Professor Leonard Schuman played a key role in drafting the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report definitively linking smoking to cancer. By 1968, 78% of Americans believed smoking causes cancer, up from 44% in 1958. In the decades to follow, SPH research played a role in the 1990 first-of-its-kind legislation that banned cigarette vending machines in public places, discovered that smoking leaves an epigenetic “shadow” on our genes no matter when we quit, identified the risk of having an abdominal aortic aneurysm drops when smokers quit, and found that a cancer-causing chemical forms in the bodies of people who vape, research that influenced legislation on flavored vaping liquid. The school’s Institute for Global Cancer Prevention Research continues to break new ground around cancer prevention, especially cancers related to tobacco.
In 2015, the school began investigating high rates of illness and death among birthing people and that led to first-time research into rural birthing opportunities, midwifery, and doula care. The work resulted in Minnesota legislation that allows Medicaid payment for services from a certified doula for pregnant people. The school’s Rural Health Research Center continues work into health equity for rural populations, including access to medical and mental health care, LGBTQ+ rights, transportation and housing. The Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity (CARHE) has health equity for birthing people of color as a major part of its portfolio and is developing the first tool to objectively measure systemic racism.
Research that influenced change
Our research has led to (among many innovations):
National action related to rural hospital closures
Method to contain PFCs (now called PFAs) to protect drinking water and the environment (2018)
First association between e-cigarettes and cancer-causing agents (2018)
Lowering of suggested age for colonoscopies to 45 (2018)
Verification of new treatment plans for people with HIV, saving millions of lives (2006, 2015)
Legislation that allows Medicaid payment for services from a certified doula for pregnant women in Minnesota
FDA-proposed restrictions of tanning bed use by people 18 years of age and younger (2015)
