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Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholars Program

by Bruce Link (Epidemiology) and Peter Bearman (Sociology)

The Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholars Program is designed to build the nation's capacity for research, leadership and action to address more effectively the broad range of factors affecting health. The program is founded on the principle that progress in the field of health depends upon collaboration and exchange among the social, behavioral and health sciences.

Each year the program enables up to 18 outstanding individuals who have completed doctoral training to engage in an intensive two-year program at one of six nationally prominent universities. Columbia University is one of the participating sites. Others are Harvard University; University of California at San Francisco and Berkeley; University of Michigan; University of Pennsylvania; and University of Wisconsin.

The goal of this interdisciplinary national program is to improve health by training scholars to rigorously investigate the connections among biological, behavioral, environmental, economic and social determinants of health; and to develop, evaluate and disseminate knowledge and interventions based upon integration of these determinants. The program is designed to produce leaders who will change the questions asked, the methods employed to analyze problems and the range of solutions offered to improve the health of all Americans.

The Health & Society Scholars Program at Columbia University is a joint initiative of the Mailman School of Public Health and ISERP. It involves faculty from a wide range of academic disciplines and pursuits, from architecture to network modeling to genetic epidemiology. The Health & Society Scholars Program represents an exciting intellectual fusion between a leading center of social epidemiology and a locus of innovative social science research.