School of Public Health - Ahmedabad University

The World Health Organization (WHO) considers public health as all organised measures (public or private) to prevent disease, promote health, prolong life among the population as a whole, and provide conditions where people can be healthy. This neces conditions where people can be healthy. This necessitates large population-based perspectives and approaches. The School of Public Health will build on the unique strengths and focus of Ahmedabad University on interdisciplinary education to train individuals equipped to develop innovative solutions that are both contemporary and wholistic to address the challenges of the 21st century. Public health includes physical and mental health as well as wellness, and the problems, as well as solutions, are complex and interdisciplinary. Ahmedabad University’s unique stepwell logo aligns closely with public health as it encompasses many positive dimensions that impact health, such as physical activity, social interactions as well as community access to water, and disaster preparedness in this era of climate change. The School of Public Health aims to develop leaders who can offer contemporary interdisciplinary solutions, drawing from the Indian ethos, to address ongoing and unimagined challenges. To improve public health and the environment locally, nationally, and globally through research, training, and developing, disseminating, and implementing sustainable evidence-based interventions, programmes, and policies. To train leaders who can adapt to changing dynamic systems to tackle ongoing and unimagined public health and environmental challenges and employ systems thinking integrating different approaches, technologies, and experts from different disciplines to create contemporary timely solutions. To engage, educate, inspire, and empower individuals, communities, and organisation leaders from multiple disciplines to make healthy choices contributing to global human and planetary health. Fostering conditions in which people can be healthy includes not only lifestyle factors but also tackling global environmental problems, especially climate change, which will otherwise become a formidable risk factor for morbidity and mortality. India has the highest deaths from air pollution globally, and access to safe water is a major challenge in many parts of the world. Water and agricultural policies impact air pollution, which, in turn, impacts water quality. Hence, maintaining a healthy state and healthy conditions is increasingly complex and largely beyond the control of individuals. We need to educate leaders capable not only of bold, out-of-the-box thinking to create innovative solutions but also have the tools to design and conduct research integrating tools like data science and artificial intelligence. Adequate solutions to complex public health problems may have an impact beyond health and often need expertise from and engagement with several disciplines. Hence, public health inherently relates to disciplines, such as Medicine, Environmental Science, Engineering, Agriculture, and Urban and Infrastructure Planning and Management. Predicting trends and understanding complex arrays of risk factors in a way that is sustainable and has an overall net benefit (not limited to health) and monitoring the impact of policies and interventions requires systems thinking. Addressing major problems will also require bold and creative action to motivate people, communities, and organisations to change norms to improve human and planetary health. The initial focus will be on Environmental Health, as well as on Analytical Sciences. The latter will include both traditional approaches (Epidemiology and Biostatistics) as well as novel approaches (Data Science) to design, analyse and understand large complex datasets. We plan to include these as complementary specialisation areas within Analytical Sciences, which can be applied to understand both environmental concerns as well as lifestyle factors that impact health. Understanding complex risk/preventive factors that impact health will enable the development and implementation of data-driven evidence-based interventions to reduce climate change and its impact. The long-term goal of the School of Public Health is to encompass key public health components and core competencies at or above global standards and to create novel integrative initiatives. In addition to speciality training programmes, we are also driven to increase awareness of public health issues and promote solutions through educating and inspiring a range of disciplines and the public at large.