Dr. Gregory L. Burke, PHS Division Chair

Welcome to the Division of Public Health Sciences of Wake Forest University School of Medicine. This web site is designed to provide you with a general overview of the teaching, research and community outreach initiatives of our group.

During our relatively short history, our group has grown to include more than 250 individuals including greater than 50 faculty. We bring a public health perspective to our medical environment.  Our focus is to identify strategies to enhance public health and disease prevention. In fact, our unique position of being a group of public health-oriented faculty and staff in the confines of an academic health center allows us to be involved in the delivery of public health prevention both in clinical settings as well as in the community. Thus, our activities focus on developing better strategies for maintaining the health of the entire community.

Public Health Sciences represents a number of complementary areas of public health and clinical research. The Division of Public Health Sciences includes three departments: Biostatistical Sciences; Epidemiology & Prevention; and Social Sciences & Health Policy. Our multidisciplinary group of public health scientists has world class expertise in a number of areas including: cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, substance abuse, cancer control, community-based participatory research, health related quality of life, women's health, population genetics, statistical methods and multi-center study coordination.

Public Health Sciences has a large and diverse research portfolio funded from government, industry and foundation sources. Our success is documented in part by the fact that we are ranked second nationally among medical school-based groups in Preventive Medicine/Public Health in NIH funding. More important than the absolute dollar amount is the impact of findings from our research efforts on improving the health of our city, our region and our country.

There will continue to be many future challenges in the arena of Public Health; we look forward to the opportunity to actively participate in efforts to further improve the health of our communities. 

I welcome you again to our divisional web page and am delighted that we are able to share our accomplishments and initiatives with you.