History
The Department of Health Policy & Management has a long history,
its predecessor, the Department of Public Health Practice was founded
and organized by Dr. James A. Crabtree in 1949. The department
originally had as its special areas of study: public health
administration, medical and hospital administration, environmental
sanitation, public health law, mental health, and public health nursing.
In 1958 Dr. Crabtree became the second dean of the Graduate School of
Public Health and Dr. Waldo Trueting became head of the department.
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Wesley
M. Rohrer |
In 1958 Trueting established a training program for social workers and the Health Law Center was established of which Professor Nathan Hershey played an integral role. In 1959 Dr. John McGiboney resigned and Dr. Cecil G. Sheps was named director of the program in hospital administration. In 1960 two units were instituted: the Social Science Unit and the Unit in History of Public Health.
In 1967 an External Committee recommended that the name of the Department be changed to the
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Professor
Nathan
Hershey |
Department of Health Administration. As the department restructured, two new areas were formed 1) generalist in administration with sequences in health administration which included medical and hospital administration, health planning and public health administration; and 2) specialist or clinically orientated areas such as: maternal and child health; community mental health, public health nursing and public health social work. In the 1960’s Edmund M. Ricci, Ph.D. coordinated the area of Health Services Research and Evaluation under are #2 above and William T. Hall became director of Public Health Social Work.
In 1965 Dr. Sheps resigned and Dr. Dean H. Clark became director of Medical and Hospital Administration. In 1968 Dr. Hilda Kroeger succeeded Dr. Dean Clark as director and an administrative residency was added to the medical and hospital administration curriculum. From 1952 through 1972 the Medical and Hospital Administration Program graduated 235 students and 73% were working in hospital administration. In 1968 a program in Health Services Administration and Planning was developed with Dr. Robert Johns as Coordinator of the program. In 1970 Professor Hershey was granted training funds by the U.S. Public Health Service
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Gordon
MacLeod |
and a program in Health Law was formed to “recruit graduate attorneys into the field of public health”
1 In 1972 Dr. Thomas Fitzpatrick replaced Dr. Kroeger upon her retirement.
In 1974, the Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH) at the University of Pittsburgh recruited Gordon MacLeod, M.D. to be its Chairman (1974-1983) and he oversaw the emergence of the Department of Health Services Administration (HSA). The Department of HSA was led in 1982 by Dr. John Cutler,
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Beaufort B.
Longest, Jr. |
Acting Chair; and 1988 Dr. Edmund M. Ricci, Ph.D. became Acting Chair. Under Dr. Ricci, the department operated with two divisions: 1) Health Administration (HA) and, 2) Public and Community Health Services (PCHS). Dr. Ricci was subsequently appointed to the position of Department Chair.
In 1987, Beaufort B. Longest, Jr., Ph.D., became Director of the MHA Program, and James M. Klingenmith, Sc.D. Assistant Director. They developed and implemented the “interschool MHA program”. This program was the first of its kind to actually grant a degree from two separate schools to use the term “interschool”. The interschool program afforded students an opportunity to earn a MBA along with the MHA. For a number of reasons the “interschool” program was dissolved and the MHA Program was moved back solely to the Graduate School of Public Health in 2001.
In
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Howard
Degenholtz |
The division of the former Department of Health Services Administration into the new Departments of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences (BCHS) and Health Policy & Management (HPM) was effected on January 1, 2002. The HPM Department houses and has full administrative responsibility for the Master of Health Administration Program, the
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Patricia
Sweeney |
Master of Public Health Program, and the JD/MPH Program. Judith R. Lave, Ph.D., Chair and Professor of Health Economics serves as Director of the MHA Program and Wesley M. Rohrer, Ph.D., MBA, Assistant Professor, HPM serves as Assistant Chair of Health Management Education and has oversight for all academic programs in the Department of HPM. Patricia Sweeney, JD, MPH, RN is the Advisor for the JD/MPH Program. In the year 2008, the Ph.D. in Health Services Research and Policy was approved by the University of Pittsburgh. The inaugural class began their program of study in September 2008. Howard Degenholtz, Ph.D. is the Advisor of the Ph.D. Program.
1. excerpted from the book Graduate School of Public Health, by Zaga Blockstein, Ph.D., pg. 178
