The following is an alphabetical list of every department that has ever existed at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, spanning its founding in 1913 (as the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers) to the present. Clicking the link will take you to the modern equivalent of that department, and its timeline + chairs. An asterisk (*) denotes that there are institutional records in the archives for this specific department. To view those collections, please visit "Browse by Department" in this libguide.
To see an isolated list of the first "departments" of the school, see The Early School (1913-1921).
Contact the archivist with questions or corrections.
Applied Immunology – Serums and Vaccines
Comparative Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Comparative Pathology and Tropical Medicine
Environmental Health (current) *
Environmental Sciences and Physiology
Global Health and Population (current) *
Health Policy and Management (current) *
Health Services Administration
Immunology and Infectious Diseases (current) *
Maternal and Child Health and Aging
Molecular and Cellular Toxicology
Molecular Metabolism (current) *
Parasitology and Tropical Medicine
Population and International Health *
Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology
Preventive Medicine and Sanitary Science (may be same as Preventive Medicine)
Sanitary Biology and Sanitary Chemistry
Social and Behavioral Sciences (current) *
Society, Human Development, and Health *
Formal departments did not exist in the early school, known as the Harvard MIT School for Health Officers. Rather, courses were grouped together in the catalog, and these specific “groups” were given titles. Students took public health courses at Harvard Medical School, Harvard University (in Cambridge), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (also in Cambridge). Read more about Harvard Chan's history, or view digitized copies of course catalogs(1913-2021).
These early "groups" of courses offered by the school are as follows:
1913 (original course catalog | 1913-1914 course catalog)
1915 (1915-1916 course catalog)
1918 - School changes name to Harvard MIT School of Public Health. Industrial Hygiene and Laboratory Courses added as additional groups.
1919 - Sanitary Engineering becomes Sanitary and Municipal Engineering
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