Dean Ranney highlights opportunity at 2025 State of the School

Opportunity was the focus of Dean Megan L. Ranney's 2025 State of the School address to the Yale School of Public Health community on September 3. While acknowledging this “tumultuous time for public health and higher education” as nothing less than a paradigm shift, Ranney said, “We at YSPH have not only the opportunity but the obligation to shape where that paradigm shift takes us.”

Ranney was introduced by Yale University President Maurie McInnis, who told the audience that “YSPH is a place for bold and innovative ideas.”

Ranney said the idea of the paradigm shift, a fundamental change within a discipline, has interested her since she was an undergraduate at Harvard studying the history of medicine. She said public health should avoid building a Maginot Line, the fortifications built by France after World War I to protect against a German invasion. But the French planners had assumed the next war would be fought the same way as the last one, so the Maginot Line “was worse than useless,” she said.

For YSPH, now is the time to "imagine what might be possible for the future if we let go of our assumptions,” Ranney said.

“The speed and pace of change is not negotiable. The world and our country are not waiting for us to catch up, to catch our breath, or to make peace with what’s going on," Ranney said. “What is negotiable is who we are in this moment.” The school, she said, is “creative, nimble, maybe scrappy and committed.”

“History shows that science and humanism always ultimately outlast the darkness, whether for Copernicus and Galileo, for Pasteur or for C.-E. A. Winslow,” a champion of modern public health in the United States and the founder of YSPH, said Ranney, the C.-E. A. Winslow Professor of Public Health.

Ranney’s address also took stock of YSPH’s first year as an independent school and the launch of its strategic plan that “shifted expectations of public health and recommitted us to our values of innovation, leadership, justice, community, and inclusion.”

Ranney said the plan and the school’s vision for “linking science and society, making public health foundational to communities everywhere” will underpin creating “a new way of working” and avoid creating a metaphorical Maginot Line.

She highlighted progress made in each of the six priorities established by the strategic plan:

1. Create pathways: “The most important engine of science and impact is, of course, our faculty,” Ranney said, pointing to nine newly hired faculty and new funding models that support their research.
2. Educate generations: The school has launched an Executive MPH (EMPH) track in health policy and introduced new courses in case studies, data science and data equity, and more.
3. Foster communities: Among the ways YSPH is fostering interconnected communities is through the Compassionate Dialogue series and the launch of the Office of Community & Practice.
4. Shape public health data science and AI: The school is developing data science programs and solutions such as the Big Data Summer Immersion at Yale program and PopHIVE, a platform that puts near real-time, reliable health data directly into the hands of the public.
5. Enhance trust: President McInnis in her remarks said, “The trust question is at the heart of this moment.” Dean Ranney noted how in the past year YSPH has tried new storytelling approaches such as documentaries and engaged with new partners including those from grassroots MAHA groups.
6. Advance operational and financial excellence: Ranney described this as the most important priority, because without it, nothing else happens. It’s imperative to helping YSPH finance and jump-start many of its initiatives, from supporting a collaborative educational program and emerging health challenges. She recognized the school’s record fundraising efforts.