About

Strategic plan

The world needs public health more than ever. We are living through a moment of challenge, and of opportunity. Establishing a school of public health in a post-pandemic era in the middle of the country allows us to be flexible, to innovate, and to build differently. That is why we are delighted to share a forward-looking plan that will guide our work through 2030, and that equips us to meet current and future public health challenges in St. Louis and globally.

Timeline

The trajectory toward a school of public health at WashU began in 2008, when the university formed the Institute for Public Health as an interdisciplinary venture with one foot on the Danforth Campus and the other on the Medical Campus. The same year, the Brown School hired its first public health faculty and staff and, in 2009, established its Master of Public Health program. In 2016, the Brown School started the public health sciences doctoral program. These milestones laid the foundation for the school as it exists today. The moments in recent years that accelerated the launch of the school and its strategic plan are highlighted in the timeline here, including the university’s strategic plan and recruitment of key personnel.

May 2022

WashU launches strategic plan, Here and Next; creating a public health school becomes a key initiative

October 2022

Public health working group recommends forming a school of public health

October 2023

Two committees form to nominate inaugural dean

May 2024

Sandro Galea appointed as inaugural Margaret C. Ryan Dean

January 2025

Galea officially begins as dean at WashU

January – May 2025

New dean shares monthly updates with WashU public health community

January – July 2025

School recruits, hires first wave of primary and secondary faculty; stands up educational programs; builds foundational systems, infrastructure; connects with local, global community partners

July 2025

School of Public Health comes online, welcoming first students

August 2025

School hosts retreat for all faculty, staff

October 2025 – January 2026

School hosts input sessions to develop strategic plan

May 2026

The Bursky Family Foundation commits $200 million to name the Andrew M. And Jane M. Bursky School of Public Health

July 2026

Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) provides accreditation to the Bursky School of Public Health

Vision, Mission, and Values

Our vision

To ensure all can live healthier, fulfilling lives.

Our mission

To promote health and well-being through excellence in interdisciplinary population health science and scholarship, distinction in education, and a deep commitment to local and global impact.

Our values

The School of Public Health is committed to excellence, diligence, compassion, and integrity. We aspire to be an optimistic, inclusive, collaborative community with a sustained focus on advancing our shared mission.

Four challenges

We are building a school of public health with a clear understanding of the challenges the field faces. The ability of our school — or any school — to genuinely contribute to the health of the public in the coming quarter century depends on confronting four interrelated challenges.

Lack of clarity about the role of public health and the institutions that support it

Outdated approaches to emerging threats

Many traditional public health approaches, and slow academic research cycles, have shown themselves to be poorly suited to fast-evolving crises and new threats. From climate change to novel pandemics, to the burden of poor mental health among adolescents, public health must adopt more agile, innovative methods and prevention-focused strategies to stay ahead of complex 21st-century health challenges.

Fragmented partnerships limit impact

Solving today’s health problems requires broad collaboration, yet the field lacks the multisector partnerships needed for tangible impact. We know that breakthroughs to protect the public’s health (e.g., rapid vaccines) can happen when academia, government, industry, and communities join forces. Public health must forge new alliances across private and public sectors to translate knowledge into widespread change.

Evidence generation lags decision-making

Policy decisions and public needs often outpace the evidence base. Research translation is too disconnected from real-time policymaking, hindering effective responses. Public health science must produce rigorous, actionable evidence at the speed of relevance — providing data and insights that leaders and communities can use immediately.

Four solutions

How do we, as a new School of Public Health, contribute to solving these field-wide challenges? We solve these challenges, as we do all challenges, centrally by understanding them, by being clear what has gone wrong, to point then to solutions. It is this clarity of thought that has long informed the writing and thinking that underpins what we are building at WashU, and that points to why we can indeed create a school designed from the outset to meet these four challenges.

Lean into science

We need to lean into science. The work of science is about holding up a mirror to nature, allowing us to understand how the world works so that we can affect positive change. Affecting transformative change requires excellent, path-breaking science that leads to practical and scalable solutions for better health, and that is unencumbered by political sways and external forces.

See Strategy 1: Engage world-class faculty and staff.

Lead and teach with our values

We need to lead with and teach the values that inform our approaches and the values that inform how societies act. These values — scientific rigor, humility, pluralism — have to underpin the work of health and need to infuse a distinctive educational program. This paves the way toward health rooted in shared values, an aspiration that brings people along with the science and innovation that can make all of our lives better.

See Strategy 2: Nurture outstanding teachers and students.

Embrace work in partnership across sectors and disciplines

The challenges that hold back health — the opioid epidemic, adolescent mental illness, chronic disease associated with aging, large-scale disasters — do not align neatly with disciplinary or sectoral bounds. These are complex, knotty problems that require the work of many, that call for the ingenuity of the private sector coupled with the capacity of the public sector to scale to millions. It is the job of health to find ways to bring these together to truly improve health for the many.

See Strategy 3: Pursue Public Health plus.

Find pathways to action

We have a moral and practical imperative to find pathways to action, to make the science real, to create opportunities for those who can make change happen, to communicate in a way that convinces, and to ensure that we remove the gap between science and practice so that the work of discovery aligns apace with the actions needed to realize its potential.

See Strategy 4: Prioritize local to global impact.

Strategy 1: Engage world-class faculty and staff

We are recruiting innovative, intellectually curious, and heterodox thinkers who are animated by the call of science and scholarship.

Our core goal as a school is to foster the creation of ideas, science, and data. Achieving this demands unwavering support and nurturing of our faculty and staff, who are the architects of the transformative ideas that benefit our society. Their dedication and innovation propel our research, education, and practice work forward. At the heart of our efforts is the steadfast commitment of our faculty and staff to produce rigorous and impactful scholarship. Their contributions help shape the next generation of leaders and thinkers, ensuring our continued impact on the world.

Broadly disseminating our scholarship

Producing scholarship that creates a better world for all

Building infrastructure and obtaining resources to support world-class science and scholarship

Success will be measured by:

Funding, based on the total dollars of funding awarded annually, the average amount of funding per primary faculty, and the acceptance rate of all external grant applications
Quality of infrastructure, based on research teams’ satisfaction of pre- and post-award supports, and suggested improvements to infrastructure

Fostering a sense of belonging where all can thrive

Success will be measured by:

Sense of belonging and well-being, indicated by the percentage of Bursky Public Health community members reporting well-being
Faculty and staff retention: five years for primary faculty; two years for staff
Tenure and promotion, based on the percentage of eligible faculty who are promoted/granted tenure annually and the percentage of eligible staff who are promoted annually

Supporting external recognition of our faculty and staff

Strategy 2: Nurture outstanding teachers and students

We are building a curriculum that is rooted in public health fundamentals with the flexibility to evolve as the field progresses and offer both in-person and digital learning options.

Nurturing outstanding teachers and students is pivotal in preparing the next generation of leaders and thinkers. We aim to achieve distinction in our educational programs and teaching, recognizing that public health faces problems of enormous complexity. To confront these challenges, we must equip students with the ability to think critically and innovatively, rooted in real-world practice. By working at the interstices of disciplines, we aim to meet the evolving needs of our students. We are dedicated to building a school that, through existing and new partnerships, supports faculty with mentorship, continuing education, and professional development opportunities. This commitment elevates our teaching and also fosters new ways of thinking in the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Attracting and retaining a broad student population

Preparing students to address current and future public health concerns

Success is measured by:

Quality of curriculum, based on student satisfaction of the quality of instruction and curricula
Effectiveness of curriculum, based on employer feedback of SPH graduates’ preparedness for the workforce, alumni feedback on their preparedness, and alumni recommendation of their academic program to others
Inclusive learning environments, based on student feedback of inclusive learning environments

Graduating alumni who go on to impact the field

Success will be measured by:

Graduates’ employment rate, based on the overall student employment rates upon graduation and disaggregated by program, and employment rate one-year post-graduation and disaggregated by program
Contribution of alumni to the field, based on case studies contributed by alumni to the field

Contributing to the scholarship of teaching and learning

Success will be measured by the growth in educational engagement and scholarly output, based on:

Number of unique teachers participating in teaching and instruction-related professional development trainings
Number of non-curricular educational opportunities offered
Number of academic and non-academic publications about education and training

Fostering participation in professional development

Success will be measured by:

Mentorship opportunities, based on the overall satisfaction with mentorship opportunities available for students, staff, and faculty and disaggregated by group
Student practicum experience, based on student satisfaction with practicum experience, practicum site satisfaction with students, and the percentage of paid practicum opportunities
Student research experience, based on student satisfaction with research experience, and student participation in publications and conferences

Strategy 3: Pursue public health plus

We will forge partnerships across WashU’s nine schools and with the public and private sectors to create a big-tent movement for public health.

In service of the mission to solve the public health challenges of today and tomorrow we engage in work that ranges from multidisciplinary to interdisciplinary to transdisciplinary. There is a place for each of these perspectives. We are inherently multidisciplinary, meaning that our work involves disciplines situated next to one another. We encourage interdisciplinary work, which occurs when various disciplines bring their perspectives together to synthesize, while preserving the perspectives of their distinctive disciplines. We strive for transdisciplinary work when and where it makes sense. This occurs when multiple disciplines come together to create a perspective that transcends disciplines. Our research networks, for example, aspire to see transdisciplinary work. We aspire for this work to unfold in intra-institutional (e.g., multiple schools at WashU) or inter-institutional (e.g., WashU and another university) settings.

Building infrastructure that enables interdisciplinary collaborations

Obtaining resources to catalyze interdisciplinary science

Strengthening our interdisciplinary curriculum

Engaging in interdisciplinary science both inside and outside the university

Strengthening our interdisciplinary collaborations and disseminating our scholarship

Success will be measured by:

Strength of interdisciplinary collaborations, based network mapping aspects such as reach, centrality, and diversity of notes
Interdisciplinary science publications, based on the total percentage of interdisciplinary publications, annual percentage of new interdisciplinary publications, and the field weighted citation impact (FWCI) of interdisciplinary publications

Strategy 4: Prioritize local to global impact

We are pursuing research, education, and practice that help build a better world, starting in St. Louis and extending our reach globally.

Driven by a commitment to improving the health of all, we aim to make a difference at the level of individuals, communities, and the social and economic forces with which they intersect. We believe that our work must be accessible and actionable for those who bring it to life in the field. Bridging the gap between knowledge and practice is essential to ensuring that academic public health genuinely enhances the well-being of the public. Our enduring partnerships – crossing sectors and disciplines – focus on fostering community driven solutions to address the evolving health challenges we face. By working together, we strive to build a healthier, more fulfilling future for all.

Building infrastructure to facilitate collaborations locally to globally

Positively impacting the health of our communities locally to globally

Becoming a good community partner

Success will be measured by the community and practice partner perceptions of the impact of Public Health at WashU as indicated by:

Perceived impact of the Bursky School of Public Health on community partners and on the local St. Louis community
Case studies of shared decision-making
Community partners’ assessment of the reciprocity, mutuality, and strength of partnerships with SPH

Forming and sustaining partnerships locally to globally to advance community health

Thank you

Our strategic planning involved 270 people overall. These included 194 people inside the school (students, faculty, and staff), 28 people elsewhere at WashU, and 48 people outside WashU, including local and national community and public health leaders. To all who engaged in our strategic planning process: thank you. Along the way, we are committed to measuring our impact and sharing our progress. We invite you to join us on this journey.

A PDF version of this plan is also available for download to save and share.

Download the strategic plan (PDF)