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. 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:
Nutrition Coordinating Center
Rural Health Research Center
State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC) Upper Midwest Agricultural Safety and Health Center (UMASH)
Recently founded centers that are addressing long-existing and emerging public health challenges include:
Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity (CARHE) Center for Healthy Aging and Innovation (CHAI) Center for Public Health Systems
Institute of Global Cancer Prevention Research
Reputation and rankings
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 #9 biostatistics PhD program
Academic programs, degrees, and divisions
The school offers a BA in Public Health and many first-rate programs leading to MPH, MHA, MS, PhD, dual degrees, and degrees for working professionals, as well as certificates and postdoctoral training in various areas of public health.
The school is composed of four academic divisions:
Biostatistics
Epidemiology & Community Health
Environmental Health Sciences
Health Policy & Management
National academic firsts:
Maternal & Child Health MPH program
Epidemiology PhD program
Graduate minor in Health Equity
Graduate minor in Sexual Health
American Indian Public Health and Wellness Certificate
History
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.