About the IPH

History of the Institute

"Public health is the science and art of promoting health."
 - Ilona Kickbusch (1989)

Established in 1992, the Institute for Public Health (IPH) at San Diego State University (SDSU) operates as a unit of the Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH), emphasizing the development and implementation of evidence-based public health practice within our community. Our mission is to bridge academic research and real-world practice by working with individual communities and assisting them to define what constitutes “best practice” and to design appropriate strategies that identify and address problem areas. We are dedicated to the principle that research and practice must work cooperatively to insure that all communities have access to quality health and social services.

Under the initial direction of Dr. Jack Conway, and then succeeded by Dr. Kim Yeager, the IPH began as a dream to develop “links” between SDSU’s Graduate School of Public Health, the San Diego County Department of Health and Human Services, and community practice. From 1992 through 1996, this multi-organizational effort focused on establishing a baseline community needs assessment of the availability of continuing education for public health professionals. This needs assessment also served as the vehicle for developing a network within the community and the desired “link” with community practice. A second focus was to establish and administer a field practice mechanism for SDSU students seeking a Masters degree in public health, providing a much needed hand-ons experience for students as well as expanding our ever growing network.

Between 1996 and 2002, then Director Dr. Winnie Willis and the IPH began offering formal program evaluation services to community-based organizations. Expansion of these services continued under the direction of Dr. Michael Peddecord and then Dr. Lisa Clark. Over these six years, and with the invaluable cooperation of our community partners, the Institute's evaluation team successfully completed many community-based program evaluations and worked with such content areas as:

• HIV prevention for injection drug users and persons with high sexual risk
• Reduction of tobacco use among Latinos
• Domestic violence prevention
• Sexual assault prevention
• Teen pregnancy prevention
• Prevention of low-birth weight in African-American communities
• Chronic disease prevention among Latino and African-American communities
• Reduction of childhood obesity in the Latino community
• Hepatitis B immunization promotion
• Improvement of flu vaccine coverage among African-Americans
• Violence prevention for men on college campuses
• Improvement of quality assurance activities for programs providing services to men who have sex with men
• Breast and cervical cancer screening

In August 2003, the Institute underwent reorganization to improve our ability to serve the needs of the community. Dr. Suzanne Lindsay (Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics) and Dr. Robert Seidman (Division of Health Services) were designated as Co-Directors of the IPH. Drs. Lindsay and Seidman have years of experience working within the Institute and have dedicated their academic careers to applied research and cooperative community efforts. As Co-Directors, Dr. Lindsay and Dr. Seidman were able to place a number of different community-based efforts under the larger umbrella of the IPH, both complementing and greatly expanding our organizational structure and our vision for the future.

Finally in June 2005, Dr. Seidman accepted an interim appointment as Associate Director of SDSU's Graduate School of Public Health. As a result, he elected to become Deputy Director of the IPH and assist Dr. Lindsay in her new role as Executive Director.

The new structure consists of the Executive Director, Deputy Director, and 7 faculty investigators supported by a skilled group of masters level professionals possessing a broad spectrum of talents and expertise. The IPH also serves as a training and education resource for masters and doctoral level students interested in improving community-based practice. Unique to the IPH, and an important component of our vision, is our ability to also tap into the expertise of GSPH faculty in a wide variety of disciplines, as needed by a specific project, including epidemiology and biostatistics, health promotion, environmental toxicology, maternal and child health, and health services administration. The expertise from other schools within the College of Health and Human Services, such as Nursing and Social Work, as well as from disciplines campus-wide, affords the IPH extensive resources to assist the community.

Our primary goal for the future is to continue to effectively partner with the community to improve the public’s health. These efforts may first include offering the opportunity for community-wide dialogs with San Diego’s health and human service providers (i.e. conferences, workshops, and planning meetings). These dialogs will serve to identify the community’s strengths as well as needs, to set priorities for collaborative projects, and to seek the resources necessary to accomplish our community public health goals. The IPH has a strong interest in matching academic resources and sources of funding for public health efforts with community partners who provide the highest-quality services to address San Diego’s public health goals.

Updated: 11/16/06