The Population Health and Health Disparities (PHHD) department is the single department that connects all SPPH departments. We are the centralizing clearinghouse bridging public health practices, research approaches, implementation science, and behavioral interventions that uniformly leverage varied scientific methods to improve the health of populations. Our colleagues in epidemiology and biostatistics and data science due identify trends and establish the significance of relationships between variables, like non-medical drivers of health with health outcomes, while our team scientists in bioethics and health humanities leverage social justice and public and health policies with qualitative and quantitative approaches to extend full humanity to all people as is the goal.
It is the collective and social responsibility of PHHD faculty members to advance population health and to improve the health of populations comprised of human beings who are unlikely to experience health and well-being in the absence of our commitment to this work. The service that we do here at UTMB SPPH through research, teaching, mentoring, and public health practice is a reminder of our ‘why’ we chose public and population health as our life’s work.