History of Public Health at Harvard

The following resources were created as part of the 2013 Centennial Celebration (note: archived website!) for the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. They were authored in partnership with the Center for the History of Medicine, but are maintained by the Harvard Chan School on their website. Please note that all links below will lead to an archived version of the Harvard Chan's website. These sites are not "live" and are longer being updated by the school. 

• Introduction to the school
• Hunter DJ, Frenk J. The Birth of Public Health Education. JAMA. 2015;313(11):1105–1106. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.1595
• 100 Years of Public Health: an interactive timeline
• Successes, stories, and surprising facts
• A Brief History of Women at the Harvard Chan School
• Discover facts, stats, accomplishments, and items of trivia you may not have known about the School.
• History of the School Shield
• Earliest departments and course offerings

Additional resources:

• Digitized version of Jean Alonzo Curran's book, Founders of the Harvard School of Public Health, with biographical notes, 1909-1946 (via Internet Archive)

In September 2019, processing archivist Hanna Clutterbuck-Cook created an interactive timeline of the school’s history (featuring the deanship, departmental name changes, chairs, and major historic events at the school). It is freely available to view online. Click the link above, or the image below (which will expand into a full screen, and then can zoom in/out). Please note: this timeline is large and difficult to print. We recommend viewing it online.