School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine: General Information
2008-2009 Academic Year
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Public Health. Students complete both degrees in a "4+1" format, e.g., four years
for the undergraduate degree and an additional year for the master's.
The BSPH program is set apart from graduate studies in public health because it is
specifically designed to provide a strong foundation in both the public health
sciences and the liberal arts. Students not only will have opportunities to delve
into timely public health issues like global health care disparities, HIV/AIDS, and
bioterrorism preparedness, they also will have the benefit of studying with senior
public health scholars in understanding the roots of public health through its
literature and history.
Students will develop both scientific and humanistic skills, combining research
experience with the ability to make difficult social choices and devise solutions to
individual and population-wide health problems. Because undergraduate
education has increasingly become more interdisciplinary, public health education
is also a great foundation for graduate study in fields such as business, human
services, international affairs, law and further public health specialties. In
addition, with a curriculum that draws from the bench sciences, humanities, and
social sciences, public health has come to be viewed as an appropriate degree for
students considering medical school.
The study of public health in Louisiana began in the early 1800s when New
Orleans suffered from endemic malaria and almost yearly epidemics of cholera
and yellow fever. Attempts to control tropical diseases led to the establishment of
the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834. The founders, a group of young
physicians, issued a prospectus, which emphasized the lack of knowledge of these
diseases and the necessity for studying them in the environment in which they
occurred. In 1881, formal instruction in hygiene was offered for the first time.
After the Civil War when Paul Tulane bequeathed funds to establish a new
university the name of the medical college was changed to Tulane University of
Louisiana, College of Medicine.
A school of hygiene and tropical medicine was first established in 1912 with a
$25,000 gift from Samuel Zemurray's United Fruit Company. In 1947, the
departments of tropical medicine and preventive medicine merged to establish a
department of tropical medicine and public health in the medical school.
Instruction at the graduate level expanded to a full academic year with programs
leading to the degrees of master of public health and master of public health and
tropical medicine. A doctoral program was approved in 1950, and the first
doctoral degrees in public health were awarded in 1953.
With the rapid expansion in public health and tropical medicine, and the
participation of other departments of the medical school in educational activities,
an administrative division of graduate public health was created in 1958. In 1961,
this administrative division was redesignated as the Division of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine. Programs leading to the degrees of Master of Science and