Advancing Biomedical Research and the Public's Health

The Department of Health Research and Policy (HRP) has as its principal goals promoting scholarship, teaching, and service in four areas. Overarching themes are understanding and eliminating (or at least ameliorating the effects of) human disease in a cost-effective manner.

• Biostatistics concerns scientific methodology in general and statistical techniques in particular as they bear upon understanding the biomedical sciences.
  The Data Coordinating Center (DCC) is a Service Center of the School of Medicine that meets its needs for managing data from ongoing research, and for planning and developing systems that will facilitate future research.
• Epidemiology involves the study of disease and predisposing conditions for disease among human populations, with the goals of understanding etiology, prevalence, and differences among groups.
• Health Services Research is concerned with the many aspects of analyzing and comparing the costs, risks, and benefits of strategies for medical care, especially medical interventions.

The Department, and each division, offers courses in its areas of specialization, providing interactions among students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty within HRP as well as throughout the campus. The Department Chair is Philip Lavori and the Associate Chair is Robert Tibshirani.