School Notes: School of Public Health
July/August 2024

Statistician joins YSPH leadership

Renowned statistician Bhramar Mukherjee has been appointed Yale School of Public Health’s inaugural senior associate dean of public health data science and data equity, effective August 1. 

“This new role symbolizes our commitment to both rigor and equity in data science as the foundation of the future of public health,” said YSPH dean Megan L. Ranney. Said Mukherjee: “I was inspired by the transformative vision Dean Ranney has for YSPH and more broadly for academic public health. Data is a quintessential quantum of research, but we often forget to ask the fundamental question: who is in my study? I believe everyone should have equal opportunity of benefiting from data resources and data products.”

Mukherjee most recently served as the John D. Kalbfleisch Distinguished University Professor, Siobán D. Harlow Collegiate Professor of Public Health, and chair of the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Yale students win global health competition

For the second time in three years, a team of students from the Yale Institute for Global Health won the annual Emory Morningside Global Health Case Competition, the largest competition of its kind in the world.

The Yale group was one of 31 teams from around the world that were asked to come up with innovative, multidisciplinary solutions to a real-world global health problem. This year, the case challenge was “Tackling India’s Twindemic: Accelerating integrated diabetes mellitus–tuberculosis care to end TB.” The Yale team won the $6,000 first prize for its solution—Akanksha, a Sanskrit word meaning ambition—which is focused on screening for latent TB among diabetic populations in India and empowering community health workers.