The popular public health major at Hopkins, one of the oldest in the nation, is following a national upward trend in the creation and expansion as such programs attract globally conscious students looking to make a difference.
The number of declared public health majors jumped from 159 in 1999 to 311 in 2008, according to Jim Goodyear, associate director of undergraduate public health.
Kelly Gebo, director of undergraduate public health, said that this year over 100 seniors will graduate from the program.
Due to the increased number of public health majors, the department will add another advisor this month.
While Hopkins is working to expand its public health program, other schools are working toward creating public health programs of their own.
According to the Washington Post, 137 of the 837 members of Association of American Colleges and Universities now offer majors or minors in the field, and more and more school representatives are attending workshops that will help them develop public health programs.
"Hopkins is one of only a handful of schools that has an undergraduate program in public health studies, though many undergraduate universities are trying to set one up because of growing student interest," Gebo said.
Goodyear is hardly surprised by the recent influx of interest in public health.
"[It] is a natural phenomenon, considering that people from across the spectrum interested in going to medical school and international policies come to Hopkins," Goodyear explained. "Students interested in going to medical school with a broader curriculum encompassing social sciences are attracted to public health studies. As seniors, undergraduates are given to opportunities to study with professors at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, which really gives young people a whole difference sense of themselves and the world."
Public health professors attributed the surge of interest in public health, both nationally and at Hopkins, to a number of reasons, but stressed that this generation of students' increased interest and awareness of global issues is a key motivation for students to pursue a course of study in public health.
"Students now are more interested in public health due to increase in awareness about health problems. You see it in the press, on the news and on TV. People now know that public health problems can be solved by being a public health major," biophysics professor Richard Cone said.
"I think students today understand the world more due to globalization," he added. "They understand that what happens in other countries impacts them, and what happens here impacts other nations. The media spreads news about epidemics and public health problems very powerfully."
Senior public health major Jemma Alarcon agreed.
"Public health has become a national trend because of the impact it has in the health of the nation. I believe it attracts even more attention now because of the realization that disease is global and not only affecting specific parts of the world," she said. "The world is waking up and realizing that it is everyone's responsibility to help each other in order to make the world a better place."
"Young adults are looking for more opportunities to help people in other countries. They have stronger desires to help than undergraduates before," public policy professor in the sociology department Andrew Cherlin said. "Perhaps it is a generational thing. In the '60s people were focused on social issues. In the '80s people were focused on themselves. Now is a new generation of people who are interested in social issues."
