Social Forces Spring 2019

This year, the Department of Sociomedical Sciences (SMS) celebrated its 50th anniversary in the 2018-19 academic term. In 1968, the Columbia University School of Public Health became the first institution in the United States to offer a graduate degree in the social sciences with a focus on health. That year, the school created the Division of Sociomedical Sciences, which later became a department when the school was granted independence from the College of Physicians & Surgeons. The founder and first chair of SMS was Professor Jack Elinson, a pioneering survey researcher who also had an appointment in Columbia’s Department of Sociology. This interdisciplinary arrangement set the model for SMS’s integration of public health and the social sciences that continues to this day.

A commitment to advancing health equity has remained SMS’s guiding light throughout its history. This philosophical orientation has remained constant as SMS has expanded its professional and disciplinary scope, built new areas of expertise, and pioneered novel areas of research. Initially focusing on doctoral training, the department subsequently expanded its master’s education in the 1990s with an emphasis on health promotion and disease prevention. Historically, the department has conducted groundbreaking work in the areas of HIV/AIDS, gender and sexuality, and tobacco control. Today, its deep and broad portfolio of research and teaching encompasses topics as diverse as aging, obesity, urban health, drug use, healthcare access, mass incarceration, occupational and environmental health, and adolescent health.

The scholarly and professional excellence of SMS can be measured in many ways. Over the past 50 years, faculty have published thousands of peer-reviewed articles in the highest impact journals of public health, medicine, and the social sciences, and written dozens of books published by leading presses. The department has educated more than 500 doctoral students and more than 2,500 master’s students who now hold leadership positions in academia and public and private health agencies. The department has conducted training and capacity building for members of the public health workforce and provided services to vulnerable communities through outreach programs.

With the Spring 2019 issue of Social Forces, SMS not only recaps the second half of the year, but we also look ahead to the next 50 years of opportunities and challenges that students, alumni, faculty, and staff are committed to continuing and strengthening in its unique approaches and perspectives in order to achieve the vision of a healthier and more just society.