Public Health School to Offer Experimental Graduate Studies

The School of Public Health will offer an experimental two-year graduate program next year for students interested in the economic and managerial aspects of medicine.

Dr. Howard H. Hiatt '46, Dean of the Faculty of Public Health, said Friday that the program was designed to fill a need for "professionals sophisticated in medicine and health, on one hand, and expert in the analytic sciences on the other."

He said that the new program will provide background in biology and medicine as well as courses in data master's degree from the School of Public Health and may be expanded to include a doctoral program.

First-year course, under the program will be in human biology and medicine Second-year courses will be given by faculty members from the Business School and the Kennedy School of Government.

"There has been no program in the past equivalent to this one," Joseph J. Harrington, associate professor of Environmental Health Engineering at the School of Public Health, and director of the new program, said yesterday.

He said recruiting for the program will being almost immediately.

He said that a graduate of the doctoral program would be ready, although still very young, to assume posts with policy making or operating health agencies in government or in private corporations.

"An undergraduate seeking admission to this program should have a couple of years of math and good background in physics, chemistry and biology," Harrington said. "But the program is definitely not for those trying to get into med school or for people who can't get into med school."

The new program was set up after studies made by a series of review panels which Hiatt established last July. Hiatt said that the panels' reports made it clear that the nation's health services are too complex to be handled by either members of the medical professions of policy planners alone.

"The crisis in health services calls for a new kind of health professional," Hiatt said