In Israel, as in other countries, awareness of the public health profession and the importance and impact that public health has on an international, national, community and personal level, is limited. The Corona pandemic has brought public health to the forefront of social discourse, and has made epidemiology, viruses and prevention household words. Most importantly, many more people any now understand the importance of public health.
The Corona pandemic of 2020 will eventually subside, but local and global health challenges – both old and new, will continue to confront us, and highly-trained Public Health experts are in greater demand than ever before.
By formulating evidence-based policies, implementing programs, evaluating services and treatments, administering health systems, and engaging in research and training, public health professionals strive to prevent and control diseases and epidemcs, promote healthy lifestyles, understand disease mechanisms, improve access to care, reduce environmental hazards, narrow health and social disparities, make neighborhoods safer and more livable, prolong life expectancy, and advance science.
With these aims in mind, the Braun School was established at Hebrew University-Hadassah 60 years ago as Israel's first school of public health. Our mission today, as it was then, is to strive to improve the physical, mental and social welfare of the population of Israel and worldwide, with a commitment towards excellence in interdisciplinary research and training.
We are dedicated to advancing public health knowledge in Israel and worldwide, and inspire personal, professional and political commitment toward 'Tikun Olam' (literally, 'world repair' – a Jewish adage that has come to connote social action and the pursuit of social justice, equity and health), or in the words of Krieger & Birn (AJPH, 1998) making the world "a better place, free of misery, inequity, and preventable suffering, a world in which we all can live, work, play, ail, and die with dignity intact and our humanity cherished". This we achieve through cultivating an integrated environment that facilitates excellence in research, teaching and creative academic activity in a cooperative and student-friendly atmosphere.
Our researchers are engaged in innovative, interdisciplinary and translational research in a wide spectrum of fields that span the molecular/genetic to the macro-social level, from chronic (and often preventable) conditions including obesity, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease to communicable diseases, and includes mental health and addictions, environmental health, health promotion, health policy and economics.
Alongside our School's broad research agenda, the Braun School is dedicated to educate and train the public health workforce in Israel and beyond. We offer curricula that prepare the next generation of researchers, teachers, and practitioners to effectively meet the public health-related needs of individuals and communities. Our
master-degree programs and
PhD program provide students with the knowledge and skills to examine the social, environmental and hereditary factors related to the health status of population groups, plan, manage and evaluate health services, engage in health-related research, diagnose community health and design relevant community health programs; assess policy decisions, understand the economic and organizational factors affecting health systems structure and functions, and more.
In addition, nearly 900 students from over 100 countries worldwide, have graduated from our unique 12-month English-language
International MPH program, and have returned home to assume key positions in governmental and non-governmental agencies, and in clinical and academic institutions.
If you are looking for a place to study public health, epidemiology or health administration, or if you are looking for potential research collaborators, the doors of the Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine are open.
Yehuda Neumark
School Director
