Then & Now: A Visual Representation
To commemorate the 2016 Centennial Celebration of the School, artists and researchers collaborated to create a series of panels around ten public health themes: Epidemics, Food, Cities, People, Environment, Mind, Numbers, Advocacy, Genes and Behavior.
Each panel collection highlights the significance of the School’s work in these areas from 1916 – 2016, citing key people and research behind advances in public health. The panels are physically located throughout 615 North Wolfe Street with an identical set installed in Hampton House at 624 North Broadway. This virtual tour of the panels simulates a walk-through of the School’s history of public health achievements.
Epidemics
Sparked by microscopic pathogens, diseases like influenza can explode in communities, tear through populations and sweep across the globe.
Food
Good health starts with the right amounts of good food. A simple axiom but devilishly hard to realize.
Cities
Since the establishment of the first cities more than 5,000 years ago, humanity has followed a steady arc of increasing urbanization. The clustering of populations spurred historic advances in education, government and scientific knowledge, but progress did not come without cost. As cities grew, inadequate sanitation and a poor understanding of disease allowed illnesses like measles, smallpox and cholera to thrive. In many modern cities, air pollution, gun violence and poverty contribute to health disparities.
People
Nothing better defines public health than the scale of its mission: protecting the health of populations.
Mind
Mental disorders - from autism to depression - affect up to half of all people at some point in their lives.
Numbers
When injury prevention pioneer Susan Baker, MPH ’68, read that balloons kill more children than any other toy, she decided to investigate by sifting through medical examiner records
Genes
Since Gregor Mendel first observed the passage of traits from pea to pea in his monastery’s garden in the mid-19th century, genetics has been one of modern science’s most complex and promising pursuits.
Behavior
Risky human behaviors—from substance use to unhealthy diet, to unprotected sex—are responsible for roughly half of all disease and death in the world.
