The Reporter: February 1997, Vol.8, No.1
Public Health Launches Refugee Program

The Columbia School of Public Health, through the Center for Population and Family Health, is creating a refugee studies program in response to the decade's dramatic increases in forced migration throughout the world. Dr. Allan Rosenfield, dean, and Dr. James McCarthy, director of the center, have announced plans for the center to expand its current scope to encompass a largely untouched aspect of international health training and program assistance. The expansion has been made possible in part by a one-year $125,000 planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. To assist in the initiation of the program, seed funds have been provided through Columbia's new Earth Institute, an interdisciplinary effort to study the Earth as a complete system through the health, natural, and social sciences.

"The Mellon Foundation and the center both saw the refugee situation as a new challenge and a neglected issue," says Dr. McCarthy, who will serve as principal investigator of the initiative. "We consider it a new challenge because the magnitude of refugee movements throughout the world has increased and is a neglected issue because university-based international health training programs have traditionally focused on the needs of settled communities."

Columbia's first master of public health degree with a concentration in refugee studies will be designed concurrent with the development of short-term training, responsive to the needs of the major U.S. and international refugee agencies. Dr. McCarthy is encouraged by positive prospects for future funding and he foresees an operational program by early 1998.

Faculty and researchers from CSPH and the center will be joined by scholars from other Columbia schools. The multidisciplinary group of faculty will ensure that the program addresses many situations that confront refugee and displaced populations.