bielefeld school of public health celebrates 10th anniversary

J Public Health (2005) 13:48DOI 10.1007/s10389-004-0078-6

N O T I F I C A T I O N

Hajo Zeeb

Bielefeld School of Public Health celebrates 10th anniversary

Received: 4 October 2004 / Published online: 14 October 2004� Springer-Verlag 2004

The only fully established School of Public Health inGermany, the SPH at Bielefeld University, recentlycelebrated its 10th anniversary in a festive ceremony.The School looks back over 10 very successful yearsin teaching and research best described by the growthin student numbers, chairs and extramural researchgrants.

From a modest starting position in 1989 when teachingstaff from various university faculties together with ex-perts from a range of collaborating institutions first of-fered a Master of Public Health course, the School as anindependent university faculty was inaugurated in 1994when the University and the Government of Northrhine-Westphalia where Bielefeld is situated realized the obvi-ous developmental potential in this field. Until todaymore than 800 students have successfully graduated fromthe School, which is currently staffed by 10 professorsand 75 scientific staff in 8 departments.

Apart from the highly successful MPH course, theSchool now offers a new Bachelor degree in healthcommunication (BHC) with an annual number of 75students, a PhD programme and a correspondance dis-tance learning course in applied health sciences. In ad-dition a Master of Science in epidemiology (MSE) isoffered for those wishing to specialize in quantitativeresearch. MPH students can obtain an additional degree ofEuropean Master of Public Health since Bielefeld is ac-tively involved in the respective ASPHER activity.

The Bielefeld School offers a range of scientific dis-ciplines to its students and research partners. The de-partments comprise social epidemiology and health sys-

tems research, public health medicine, epidemiology andinternational public health, prevention and health pro-motion, health economics and management, nursing sci-ences and healthcare research as well as environment andhealth. Recently the new department of demography andhealth was opened, thus adding a highly relevant researchfield to the portfolio of the School.

In terms of research activities the SPH has been able toattract more than 30 million Euros extramural researchfunding in the past 10 years, both from national and in-ternational sources. The research interests center aroundissues of health care research, child and youth health,quality in health care and environmental and infectioushealth hazards to name only a few. Reflecting publichealth as an interdisciplinary science the different de-partments aim at close collaboration in research andteaching. Internationally, the SPH is a WHO collaboratingcentre for child and adolescent health promotion, and theschool also hosts several regional research co-ordinationcenters.

For the future the Bielefeld School of Public Healthwill focus on the consolidation and further developmentof its now well established teaching programme and adecisive strengthening of research capacities. Closer tieswith international partners are at the core of ongoing andfuture developments and grant-supported university part-nerships with institutions in India and Turkey are cur-rently being established. In this line Bielefeld SPH alsolooks forward very much to hosting the ASPHER Deansand Directors’ meeting in 2005.

H. Zeeb ())Department of Epidemiology & International Public Health,School of Public Health University of Bielefeld,P.O.Box 100131, 33501 Bielefeld, Germanye-mail: hajo.zeeb@uni-bielefeld.de