Population health science is the study of the conditions that shape distributions of health within and across populations, and of the mechanisms through which these conditions manifest as the health of individuals. Population health science is hitting its stride. Several leading schools of public health are launching doctoral programs in population health science and trainees in these schools are increasingly thinking of themselves as population health scientists. But what is “population health science”? Is it simply public health in a new cloak? Dr. Galea delineates that population health science is a pragmatic science that aims to marshal evidence as a way to inform interventions that improve the health of populations. He presents the foundations of population health science, aiming to provide the audience with formative core principles around which we can organize our thinking and scholarship in this area.

Dr. Galea is a physician and an epidemiologist. He is the Robert A. Knox Professor and Dean at the Boston University School of Public Health.

This talk is part of the 2015-2016 UC Berkeley School of Public Health Dean’s Speaker Series.