JOHNSON CITY – A Kick-Off Celebration for the new College of Public Health at East Tennessee State University will be held on Thursday, Jan. 24, at 6:30 p.m. in the Grand Soldiers Ballroom at the Carnegie Hotel.

Dr. Harrison Spencer, President/CEO of the Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH), will give the keynote address.  The evening will include a reception, giveaways, and the unveiling of the “Milestones in Public Health” exhibit currently traveling around the country.

In 2000, Spencer became the first full-time President and CEO of ASPH, a national organization representing deans, faculty, and students of the graduate schools of public health in the United States, Mexico, and Puerto Rico.  He has held the deanships of the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

While employed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Spencer served as Chief of the Parasitic Disease Branch and was founder and director of the CDC research station in Nairobi, Kenya. In addition, he was a Senior Medical Officer with the Malaria Action Program of the World Health Organization in Geneva.

In 2007, the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) granted ETSU approval to divide its College of Public and Allied Health into two separate colleges: the College of Public Health and the College of Clinical and Rehabilitative Health Sciences.

The university’s College of Public Health is the first of its kind in Tennessee and the only one in Central Appalachia.  Nationally, there are only 46 schools of public health that are full or associate members of ASPH.  ETSU currently has a graduate program in public health that is accredited by CEPH, and Dr. Randy Wykoff, Dean of Public Health, and the faculty and staff, working with community representatives, will spend the next two years making preparations for accreditation of the entire college.

“Public health is the science of using community-based approaches to improving health,” Wykoff said.  “It is being increasingly recognized that strengthening public health is absolutely essential to improving personal health.  In many situations, focusing on the advancement public health has been shown to have a greater impact on the health of a population than any other intervention.

“Public health is essential, and having this new college at ETSU is a very important opportunity to address some of the leading health problems facing the state of Tennessee and the people of Appalachia.” 

With an accredited College of Public Health, ETSU can compete for major grants and extramural dollars to support research in the field.  A recent economic impact study found that the ETSU College of Public Health would be a major economic thrust in the region and state, producing nearly $41.5 million annually for Tennessee by the end of its first decade, and creating as many as 377 new jobs that would generate $16.1 million in household income. For more information, call (423) 439-4243.

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