As of September 18, 2024, we are the Tulane University Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine! Our name recognizes the landmark total lifetime giving of Celia Scott Weatherhead, a 1965 graduate of Tulane’s Newcomb College and a stalwart supporter of issues of public health and health equity.
Our school was initially founded in 1912 when it became the very first school of public health in the United States. Tulane’s commitment to public health goes back even further, however, to 1834 when the university was founded to address concerns of cholera, yellow fever, smallpox, and malaria.
The Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health continues to educate passionate students who want to make a difference in the health and well-being of populations around the globe. Located in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the curve of the Mississippi River, the Weatherhead School is at the epicenter of some of the most pressing issues facing public health today, like the intersection of climate change and health, the intractability of health inequities, and the re-emergence of tropical infectious diseases. These factors and more make us the public health school of the South.
Our public health students are grounded in the foundational competencies and topics of the field, such as epidemiology, biostatistics, and the social determinants of health, but they can also choose areas of specialization that set them apart in fields such as maternal and child health, disaster management, violence prevention, and more.
The only public health school with a Department of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease, we have studied vector-borne diseases extensively, with ongoing research in malaria, dengue, and Chagas. We also have a strong focus on cardiovascular disease, health equity and disparities, reproductive health, nutrition, and disaster response and displacement, along with growing strengths in genomics, epigenetics, and other aspects of personalized health. Research hubs in both emerging and traditional topics like climate change and health, data science and artificial intelligence, and cancer prevention and control offer interdisciplinary opportunities to faculty and students alike.
As a top-tier research institution, students learn from faculty who are leaders actively engaged in key issues and in pursuit of greater knowledge and solutions that will improve the lives of populations, communities, and people. Our accomplished faculty are committed public health professionals regularly recognized among their peers with awards, prestigious memberships, and important roles and responsibilities on editorial boards and within associations. They take their job preparing the next generation of public health professionals very seriously.
Our students gain a rigorous skills-based education here, and we are fortunate to count ministers and commissioners of health, deans of schools of public health, and presidents and CEOs of health organizations among our alumni. Whether they pursued their degree on our downtown New Orleans campus or through one of our growing list of high-caliber online programs, all of our graduates go on to do important, life-changing work. As an equity-minded institution, our aim is to graduate a cadre of public health professionals who reflect the communities most in need of public health support.
Join more than a century’s worth of Tulane graduates who have arrived with passion and left with purpose as leaders in public health.
