As we begin our new academic year, it is my enormous pleasure to welcome our first cohort of students into the major in Global Public Health and the Common Good and also to welcome our fifth annual cohort of students into the Global Public Health minor.
  
Creation of these programs reflects unwavering support from Boston College’s senior leadership, who recognize clearly the alignment of global public health with Boston College's Jesuit, Catholic mission. It builds on nearly a decade of extraordinary progress that began at BC in 2014 when the late Dean Alberto Godenzi of the School of Social Work in partnership with Professors Summer Hawkins (Boston College School of Social Work), Joyce Edmonds (Connell School of Nursing) and Maureen Kenny (Lynch School of Education and Human Development) initiated our first public health courses. Then five years ago, in 2019, we launched our minor in Global Public Health and the Common Good. We have now graduated 150 students with the official minor and countless other students have taken public health classes at Boston College. Since 2021, a small group of intrepid students have been pursuing independent majors in Global Public Health. These students have shown us that a major was possible. 

With great joy, we have seen our graduates go on to medical school, post-graduate nursing education, dental school, schools of veterinary medicine, and post-graduate studies in public health and health policy.  We have seen them enter the Peace Corps, the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and embark on careers in nursing, public health and environmental science. Now with great anticipation, we begin a new chapter.

It is also my great pleasure to welcome our newest faculty member in the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good, Professor Shelley White.  Professor White is a Boston College graduate who obtained her PhD in Sociology from Boston College in 2011 with dual specialization in Health and Public Policy and Globalization and Political Economy. Please join me in welcoming Professor White back to The Heights.

Additionally, please welcome Ella Whitman, who is the new Research Assistant in the Global Observatory for Planetary Health. Ella is a 2023 Boston College graduate who pursued an independent major in Global Public Health and the Common Good and a minor in Medical Humanities. 

I wish all of you a happy and productive semester and look forward to seeing many of you around campus!

Philip J. Landrigan 
Director of the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good and the Global Observatory on Planetary Health