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A team sport: How newly-hired Dean Sandro Galea sees the future of public health at WashU

Galea speaks with Student Life about the new School of Public Health (Eran Fann | Contributing Photographer)
The new Dean of Public Health, Dr. Sandro Galea, sat down with Student Life editors Lily Taylor and Zach Trabitz.
Galea is a population-health scientist, physician, and author. He is the inaugural Margaret C. Ryan Dean of the School of Public Health and the Eugene S. and Constance Kahn Distinguished Professor in Public Health at WashU. He was born in Malta and got his medical degree from the University of Toronto before working in Somalia for Doctors Without Borders, which inspired him to switch careers and dive into the world of public health.
On Jan. 29, Galea will be giving a talk titled “Why health? Reimagining what we think about when we think about health” as part of WashU’s Assembly Series.
The School of Public Health, which will launch in 2026, aims to improve research, access, and information dissemination in health areas such as environmental and mental health.
Student Life (SL): What are you excited about in your new role at WashU?
Sandro Galea (SG): This [new school] is an outstanding opportunity for WashU and for the world. Public health can be transformative to the world. It’s about creating conditions for people to be healthy, and, fundamentally, we all want to be healthy. We all want our loved ones to be healthy. So, insofar as more of us are engaged with public health, it is good for the world. And WashU is uniquely positioned to make a real difference in public health for several reasons. It is a university with a long tradition of distinction and excellence in medicine, and public health is a natural partner [for that]. And we are in the middle of the country, where there really isn’t engagement in public health. There’s an opportunity for local and regional impact, but also national and global. And from a personal point of view, I’ve led a big school of public health for about a decade, and I’ve learned lessons that will lend [themselves] well to this effort. I think it’s a really interesting moment in time, a really interesting opportunity.
SL: How do you see the School of Public Health being part of WashU’s mission of “In St. Louis, For St. Louis”?
SG: The kind of school we want to build is one that does exceptional scholarship and research, that is distinctive in its education, and [that] is committed to local and global impact. I think you begin at home, and St. Louis has a number of challenges that public health can help find answers to. We want to partner with local organizations to do work that pushes the city forward to be healthier. I’m looking forward to making that engagement a core part of the school.
SL: How are you planning on tackling the skepticism you’ve seen towards public health?
SG: Because of COVID, I think, the challenge public health has is in communicating. And I think public health made a mistake of allowing itself to be seen as a blue [Democratic] sector. I think that’s a mistake. Public health is about the health of populations, not the health of Democratic populations or Republican populations or Independent populations, but all populations. Public health needs to figure out a way to communicate across partisan lines.
SL: How do you define the role of dean for yourself?
SG: I think the dean does four things. Number one, I think the dean works with staff, faculty, and students to set direction and where we want to go. Number two, the dean is responsible for building the structures to make sure that the vision can become reality. That’s particularly so in a new school, because we’re building all these new structures. Number three is that a dean is responsible for externally representing the school, and that means both within the University … as well as the outside world. And number four, a dean is responsible for making sure there are adequate resources to actually achieve that vision.
SL: What do you want students, faculty, and community members to know about the school? How would you pitch it to an incoming student?
SG: I think what we’re doing is the most interesting thing in academic public health in the world. I think there is no other university of this caliber, commitment, scholarship, and research to create an exceptional School of Public Health in the U..S. or globally. I would invite students who are attracted by that to join us in being part of something that’s starting off, [instead of] a place where things have been done a certain way for 20 years. There will be challenges, but also enormous opportunities.
SL: How will you take advantage of WashU’s emphasis on interdisciplinary studies?
SG: We are building, at the heart of the school, what are called “interdisciplinary research networks,” and these will be structures to catalyze collaboration across disciplines. We’ll have networks around topics of global health; around food and nutrition; around dissemination, implementation; around health policy. And their role will be to cast a wide net and to encourage faculty and staff and students from across the University to engage in doing innovative, creative work. We are building a school, but we’re trying to represent and elevate the work of public health that’s done at WashU. That doesn’t mean just the work that’s done in the School of Public Health. That means the work of public health done at WashU, wherever you are doing that work.
SL: How do you plan to engage with WashU’s pre-med program and Barnes-Jewish Hospital? How do you envision those relationships?
SG: Medicine is a natural partner for public health. The metaphor, which I’ve used in some of my writing, is that a soccer team has 11 players. Ten of the players are safety, housing, clean environment, drinkable running water, a world without structural racism, where you have equal opportunity, everybody has a livable wage, where people are not afraid of violence, and so on. If those 10 players fail, and you’re still sick, the goalkeeper is medicine. To save the ball, fundamentally, the game is played by all.
SL: Is there anything that has surprised you since moving to St. Louis?
SG: I think the food here is twice as good as Boston, [because] I think it’s affordable for young chefs. There’s just much better, greater variety of foods.