Field Description
The field of Public Health & Planetary Health unites and facilitates the university’s basic and applied research at the intersection of human population health and ecosystem health. The field currently offers Master of Public Health (MPH), accelerated MPH, and a complementary MPA/MPH program.
Master of Public Health
Cornell’s MPH curriculum is designed to help students build and develop skills in areas that are critical for public health. Different from large undergraduate programs, this professional master’s program is designed to create a ‘community of practice’ where we all push each other to grow and improve, in both traditional public health knowledge areas, and in professional competence (e.g., “soft skills”, “leadership”, “emotional intelligence”, etc.). We are a small cohort of students and core faculty, drawing on expertise from across campus and across the world. At this time, we offer two concentration areas, with interdisciplinary instruction from both researchers and practitioners:
Emergency Preparedness & Management
Students in this concentration will learn the drivers of emergencies and environmental disasters, and the organizational theories, policies, and practices that influence prevention, preparedness, and response. Students will assess and analyze disaster-related risks to community health, spatially map physical and socioeconomic vulnerabilities, anticipate how those risks and vulnerabilities will change over time, and use this understanding to inform response.
Environment, Climate & Health
Students in the Environment, Climate & Health concentration will become leaders of change. Critically, they will not only learn the downstream, harmful impacts of current behaviors, but will learn how to design, implement, and test interventions at both the local and global levels that promote inter-related human health and environmental health. Students will expand their toolkits by considering externalities and risks, elevating indigenous voices and lived experiences, working collaboratively, and making data-based decisions that recognize tradeoffs and future consequences.
Food Systems for Health
Students learn to take a systems approach to assess and coordinate policies or interventions that ensure safe and sustainable land use, food production, food storage, food processing, food delivery, and consumption. This includes training in toxicology, food safety, food and water security, and/or nutrition. Students learn how to engage local and global communities to assess systems or needs, develop interventions from a One Health approach, and lead monitoring and evaluation processes to ensure public health needs are being met.
Infectious Disease Epidemiology
Graduates are prepared to manage, prevent, identify, and respond to infectious disease threats, covering ongoing and emerging viral, bacterial, fungal or parasitic disease concerns in both humans and animals. Students learn how to measure and track disease spread, map and disseminate appropriate public health communications, and to lead a coordinated response to address the public health need. This includes training in epidemiological techniques specifically related to infectious diseases and outbreak investigation, as well as training in vector borne diseases.
Data and Statistics
Field Manual
Faculty
Christopher Brendan Barrett
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Ana Isabel Ramos Bento
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
- Research Interests: pathogen evolution and phylodynamics, seasonal disease transmission, anthropogenic effects (e.g. vaccines), adaptive behavior, the role of climate
Jennifer Bloodgood
- Campus: Ithaca - (Divisional Member)
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
- Research Interests: pathology, infectious disease, and the interface of human and wildlife health
Casey Lu Cazer
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
- Research Interests: epidemiology of zoonotic diseases; evidence-based medicine; One-Health
Kevin J. Cummings
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Julia L. Finkelstein
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Kathryn Fiorella
- Campus: Ithaca - (Divisional Member)
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Maria Fitzpatrick
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Elizabeth Lorraine Fox
- Campus: Ithaca - (Divisional Member)
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Lorraine Ayana Francis
- Campus: Ithaca - (Divisional Member)
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Amandine Gamble
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
- Research Interests: Host contributions to pathogen dynamics across biological scales, emerging bat-borne viruses and their hosts, and bacterial pathogens of endangered seabirds, translate scientific outputs into sustainable, targeted solutions against pathogen threats, with the focus on ecological interventions
H. Oliver Gao
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Rodman Guy Getchell
- Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Laura Goodman
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Karla Hanson
- Campus: Ithaca - (Divisional Member)
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Laura C Harrington
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Alistair T. Hayden
- Campus: Ithaca - (Divisional Member)
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
- Research Interests: pathology, infectious disease, and the interface of human and wildlife health
Jarra F. Jagne
- Campus: Ithaca - (Divisional Member)
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Yihong Li
- Campus: Ithaca - (Divisional Member)
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Josephine E.M. Martell
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
- Research Interests: social equity, implementing public policy, and building cross-sector partnerships, strategic communication, environmental conservation, climate
Katherine A. McComas
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Gen Meredith
- Campus: Ithaca - (Divisional Member)
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Jamila Michener
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Jeanne M. Moseley
- Campus: Ithaca - (Divisional Member)
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
- Research Interests: engaged learning partnerships and programs; integrating the arts and the humanities; utilizing evaluation methodologies to strengthen programs, partnerships and pedagogy; student success; collaboration and partnerships focused on the linkages between the environment and human health
Courtney Cuinn Murdock
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Rebecca Judith Nelson
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Jeff D. Niederdeppe
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Corinna A Noel
- Campus: Ithaca - (Divisional Member)
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
- Research Interests: behavioral and environmental influence on population health; disease surveillance; evidence-based public health; opioid use in rural settings
Daryl Van Nydam
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Todd Olmstead
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
- Research Interests: Health economics, Cost-benefit analysis, Cost-effectiveness analysis, Cost-utility analysis
Raina K. Plowright
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
- Research Interests: pathogen spillover; pandemic prevention; ecosystem and human health; viral pathogens, one health
Amelia Greiner Safi
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Krysten L. Schuler
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Linda Shi
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Laura Elizabeth Smith
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
- Research Interests: maternal and child nutrition; micronutrients; one health
Alexander J.A. Travis
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Jamie Vanucchi
- Campus: Ithaca - (Divisional Member)
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Isaac B. Weisfuse
- Campus: Ithaca - (Divisional Member)
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Nancy M. Wells
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Gary R Whittaker
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
Charley E. Willison
- Campus: Ithaca
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology
- Research Interests: health policy; homelessness
Caroline B. Yancey
- Campus: Ithaca - (Divisional Member)
- Concentrations: Public Health: food systems and health; infectious disease epidemiology