Social And Behavioral Sciences Department

The lifecycle of public health and disparities research has been described as having three key elements: 1) detecting public health problems and health disparities, 2) understanding the mechanisms that underlie them, and 3) reducing them through design and deployment of targeted interventions.

We distill this to three key elements: See. Understand. Act. Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS) faculty members span–and traverse–these three aspects of public health research. We carry out rigorous observational research to identify public health issues and disparities in health outcomes, develop novel study designs to understand the mechanisms that drive these outcomes, and act on that knowledge by designing interventions, crafting policy recommendations, and teaching the next generation of public health practitioners.