Yale's Campaign for Humanity Supports YSPH's Work For Better Health

This October, Yale University launched a capital campaign with the theme “For Humanity,” reflecting Yale’s dedication to the global importance and impact of the research and teaching that is taking place across campus. The Yale School of Public Health is positioned to be a leading partner in this campaign. “For Humanity” aligns with the school’s expertise in saving lives and improving health outcomes around the world.

The school has been and remains committed to growing its endowment by raising funds in support of scholarships, fellowships, professorships and research funds. This support is essential to the essence of our school and ensures that we can bring the best and brightest to campus to join our diverse community of excellence. The “For Humanity” campaign will support these ongoing priorities, advancing every aspect of the school’s work.

Launching a capital campaign requires the university to establish a clear mission and vision that create a unifying path for success. The “For Humanity” campaign has defined four university priorities that are uniquely aligned with much of what we do well at YSPH: Science for Breakthroughs, Collaboration for Impact, Leaders for a Better World, and Arts and Humanities for Insight and Inspiration.

We are accelerating Yale’s leadership in science and engineering to spark discoveries that benefit millions. By fueling the discoveries of tomorrow, we can propel lifesaving advances and create a healthier and more sustainable future.

YSPH is focused on the future. The school strives for improvements that can be implemented now to ensure improved health outcomes in communities at home and abroad. We are a leader in health informatics, biostatistics and epidemiology. The school’s history is founded on the dedication to explore, analyze, model and offer solutions for the most complex health issues facing humanity.

Planetary solutions and data science are just two of the cornerstones of this work–YSPH experts and students gather and use data with the potential to reach and transform communities locally and globally. The Yale Center on Climate Change and Health is one of the only centers of its type in a school of public health. It seeks planetary solutions to support a world with a stable and safe climate in which human health and diverse ecosystems can thrive.

Today’s greatest challenges call for innovative and cross-disciplinary solutions—the kind that arise from human connection. In an era of rapid change, we make progress through the sharing of ideas, the spark of inspiration and the understanding that arises when people welcome diverse perspectives. Yale combines a culture of collaboration with a commitment to people, ensuring that the insights of one field can rapidly drive breakthroughs in another.

Collaboration is the essence of public health practice and research and is one of the school’s greatest strengths. YSPH faculty, students, research and programs are interwoven across most of Yale, with 18 YSPH-based centers or institutes and 28 university affiliations and partnerships. In addition, we offer more joint degree programs than any other professional school at the university, including a one-year M.P.H. degree for Yale undergraduates planning to pursue a public health career.

These collaborative partnerships call upon YSPH faculty and students to devise complex, interdisciplinary and intersectional solutions. One example is the Yale Institute for Global Health (YIGH), which fosters partnerships with experts from across campus and around the world to find solutions to problems that no individual faculty member, professional school or university could effectively tackle alone. The school plans to expand the reach and influence of YIGH’s work. Another example is the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, which now offers dedicated courses on race and health justice in collaboration with the Law School.

For centuries, Yale graduates have written important chapters in the history of our nation and world. Today, we are proud to educate students who create, inspire and lead, contributing to every realm of human endeavor.

YSPH graduates go on to lead and influence at all levels. This includes advising U.S. presidential administrations, lending essential perspectives to the World Health Organization, implementing preventive strategies for community health and fighting injustice with evidence-based policy. The comprehensive educational experiences of YSPH students prepare them to tackle today’s most complex challenges, with profound and far-reaching implications. YSPH graduates will be on the front lines of the next pandemic, the climate crisis and many other public health events we all will face in the years ahead.

Yale creates and preserves knowledge that will benefit humanity. By nurturing creativity and seeking answers to new and timeless questions, we deepen understanding and illuminate the world and our place in it.

With the help of the Schwarzman Center as well as the Yale schools of Drama, Music, Nursing, Medicine, Architecture and Management, YSPH launched an initiative in early 2019—Humanities, Arts and Public Health Practice at Yale (HAPPY)—that combines humanities, the arts and public practice to improve health outcomes. This work matches cutting-edge research and partners with talented students, faculty and artists to encourage innovative approaches to community health through the arts.

In these challenging times, donor support of the Yale School of Public Health is more essential than ever. The school continues to search for funds that will help to grow its endowment—scholarships, professorships and research funds—and to free up school resources that support scholarships directly, enabling these resources to fund vital school priorities. The school has lofty goals for the future that can be accomplished only with robust support.

Founded in 1915 as one of the first two schools of public health in the country, YSPH continues its 100-plus years of fighting disease and improving health, and is dedicated to forging new ways to help society on a local, national and global scale. The school plans to expand its global impact by positioning YSPH as a national and world leader in preventing infectious disease; addressing social determinants of health and climate change and health (including the Yale Center on Climate Change and Health at YSPH); leveraging data and molecular technologies to save lives through pandemic preparedness and health informatics (such as creating a Center for the Advancement of Pandemic Prevention); and expanding the influence of the Yale Institute for Global Health.

The “For Humanity” Campaign is an unprecedented opportunity for YSPH to garner the support that will enhance its contributions around the globe. The school’s founding principles are well fitted to the campaign’s four priorities.

This campaign invites the school’s alumni, friends and the community at large to join it on a journey to garner financial support to strengthen YSPH’s ability to improve human health for generations to come.

To learn more, visit forhumanity.yale.edu/ or contact Cornelia Evans, senior director of development and alumni affairs.