We are working with the Office of Multicultural Affairs in the medical school to attract minority students. Last year we received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that allows us to bring high school students to campus during the summer in hopes of getting them interested in public health before they make career decisions. We try to be sure that we have courses in our curriculum that address public health issues that are of importance to these students. We are also mobilizing our alumni to help in our recruitment efforts and we are offering more scholarships, many to students from communities of color. You also have said that more attention must be paid to health and disease prevention, and population-based health.
Some people think that it means just providing health care to the poor.
Since 1900 the average life span has been lengthened by 30 years. Twenty-five of these years are due to advances in public health. We are a very treatment-oriented society. We believe that by taking drugs we can cure almost any illness. While these are wonderful advances, our greatest advances in public health in the last century have been in prevention.