Posted on: Tuesday, June 4, 2002

UH on way to revive public health school

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

The first big step was taken yesterday to re-establish a School of Public Health in Hawai'i.

"We're on our way to becoming an accredited School of Public Health," said a jubilant Dr. Edwin Cadman, dean of the UH medical school.

His good news was that programs in both epidemiology and gerontology at the University of Hawai'i John A. Burns School of Medicine have now been accredited for master's degrees.

The School of Public Health lost accreditation in mid-1999, a victim of infighting, money troubles, lagging research, dwindling enrollments and a lack of administrative support. But six months ago Cadman said he was "fast-tracking" a push to get it back, one piece at a time.

"We got the phone call this morning. We were accredited (in two programs) for three years with a potential extension for another two years," said Cadman, who hopes to see a newly defined and full-fledged school eventually spun off from the medical school.

But there's still far to go. Epidemiology, in particular, is just one of five well-defined programs of excellence a school must offer. These must include: biostatistics, behavioral health, environmental health and healthcare policy.

State Health Department Director Bruce Anderson called the news "a giant step forward" in rebuilding public health training in the state to fight everything from bioterrorism to outbreaks of infectious disease such as dengue fever. He was especially enthusiastic about accreditation for epidemiology, which he said is a "core" science in guarding public health since Sept. 11.

Having the capacity to train experts in epidemiology within the university system has become increasingly important in the wake of the anthrax scare and the local dengue outbreak, Cadman said.

Already the program has been collaborating with the state Health Department in building laboratory capacity for research on viruses such as dengue that are prevalent in the Pacific.

F. DeWolfe Miller, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health Sciences in the med school, said that before last year's dengue outbreak the university's capacity to help with such a threat was virtually nonexistent. Some labs had been idle for years, he said. But all have now been renovated.

Cadman said that, within the next 18 months, he expects to be able to go after accreditation in environmental health.

It was Miller who flew to the East Coast last week to argue the case for accreditation before the Council on Education for Public Health, the national independent accrediting body. A site visit was made earlier this spring.

In this coming fall semester students will now be able to seek a master's of public health in either epidemiology or gerontology. Those who graduated last month, having taken the same courses, earned a master's of science in the discipline of epidemiology or gerontology, said Cadman.

But the 35 or so who graduate next year will earn their master's of public health in either of those two disciplines.