SUNY Downstate's School of Public Health Receives Full Five-Year Accreditation

BROOKLYN, N.Y., Dec. 20, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --The School of Public Health at SUNY Downstate Medical Center has received full accreditation from the Council on Education for Public Health for the maximum period of five years.  While the Council had previously accredited the school's five Master of Public Health degree programs and four Doctor of Public Health degree programs, this is the first accreditation for the school itself.

Pascal James Imperato, MD, MPH&TM, founding dean and dean of the School of Public Health, said, "The accreditation of our school is a major milestone for Downstate, Brooklyn, and New York City. With an emphasis on urban and immigrant health, the school has already had a major impact on improving the health and well being of the people of Brooklyn through its numerous collaborative community-based health promotion and disease prevention programs."

The SUNY Downstate School of Public Health is the first accredited school of public health in the history of Brooklyn, and only the second such school in New York City. It is also the first accredited school of public health at a publicly supported university in New York City.

The multi-phase accreditation process for the school began in 2008 with the initiation of a self-study process that involved many internal and external stakeholders. An accreditation site visit took place in late June 2010, following the submission of an extensive self-study document.

The School of Public Health began in 2001 as a Master of Public Health Program offering one degree and admitted its first 12 students in 2002.  Over the subsequent years, the program's degree offerings and enrollment greatly expanded.  With this growth, the Master of Public Health Program became the Graduate Program in Public Health in 2008 and the School of Public Health in 2009. The school currently has an enrollment of 125 students and over 100 alumni.

As an accredited school, the SUNY Downstate School of Public Health joins the ranks of only forty-seven such schools nationally accredited and becomes eligible to compete for millions of Federal dollars restricted to such schools. The school is now also eligible to use the common application process for students that is sponsored by the Association of Schools of Public Health, a privilege restricted to nationally accredited schools.

SUNY Downstate Medical Center, founded in 1860, was the first medical school in the United States to bring teaching out of the lecture hall and to the patient's bedside. A center of innovation and excellence in research and clinical service delivery, SUNY Downstate Medical Center comprises a College of Medicine, Colleges of Nursing and Health Related Professions, a School of Graduate Studies, a School of Public Health, University Hospital of Brooklyn, and an Advanced Biotechnology Park and Biotechnology Incubator.

SUNY Downstate ranks eighth nationally in the number of alumni who are on the faculty of American medical schools. More physicians practicing in New York City have graduated from SUNY Downstate than from any other medical school.

SOURCE Suny Downstate Medical Center