"Our central mission at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) is to carry the banner of prevention to communities and nations. We wish to help the public understand the underlying reasons for poor health, and to implement prevention measures that will ensure that all citizens are born healthy and remain so throughout their lives. We are at once idealists and pragmatists. We see it as our responsibility to discover new ways to fight diseases before they take hold, educating our students in both the conceptual and practice bases for promoting society-wide changes when they leave the school.

 

"The major gains in health in the 20th century are attributable largely to the impact of public health and disease prevention rather than to medical interventions. Deaths from heart attacks and stroke in the United States have dropped by 30 to 50 percent. Smoking, which is estimated to be responsible for about 20 percent of all deaths in the country, has declined from 42 to 25 percent. Infant mortality in the United States has declined by 26 percent in the past decade and is at the lowest level ever. Vaccines have eliminated small pox worldwide and have reduced measles, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria, and meningitis in many countries to a handful a year.

"Unfortunately, the benefits of biomedical science and public health have not been made available to everyone. Much of the knowledge about individual risks that will be derived from mapping the human genome and modern biomedical science, as well as the resources to obtain the boutique treatments and preventions to overcome these risks, will simply not be available to the 85 percent of the world’s population who comprise the developing world. One can only hope that effective, safe, and affordable preventions and treatments relevant to entire populations will emerge.

"In developed and developing countries, cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases, psychiatric disease, cancer, and physical injuries are the major global burdens of disease and disability. The challenge for biomedical science and public heath in the coming century is to develop the population-based interventions needed to reduce these burdens."

Barry R. Bloom