Chair's Message
People are always the greatest resource of any institution and what excites me the most about my new role as the Department Chair is that we have people with the skills, commitment, and passion to address our department mission to prevent disease and promote wellness. ”
Mercedes Carnethon, PhD
Chair, Department of Preventive Medicine
Welcome to the Department of Preventive Medicine website.
We are extremely proud of our strong history and accomplishments that include making significant strides in the identification of risk factors for the leading causes of illness, injury and death around the world, AND we are equally proud and enthusiastic about what the future brings.
As you will see from the faculty pages and descriptions of our programming, we are a team of faculty, staff and trainees who rely on methodologies common in public health, medicine, and the social and laboratory sciences to identify the multifactorial causes of morbidity and mortality. We describe and intervene upon factors at the individual, interpersonal, and the community level to improve health across the lifecourse from preconception through older adulthood. We carry our work out in communities that reflect diversity by race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity of our global community.
As we build on our history and look to the future, I am excited to begin my term as the 4th Chair in the 51-year history of the Department. The proliferation of information and data relevant to human health, has provided us with the opportunity to investigate the leading causes of death and disability around the world through a new broader lens. Of course, “data” and “information” are only useful because we have the methodological tools to harness and interpret those data. Those interpretations are provided by our standing faculty who are leaders in their respective research field and supported by scientific and programmatic staff who are equally qualified and committed to our department’s mission.
We have built partnerships across the institution and within our community that allow us to bring our discoveries to the communities we serve. People are always the greatest resource of any institution and what excites me the most about my new role as the Department Chair is that we have people with the skills, commitment, and passion to our department mission to prevent disease and promote wellness.
Please see what we have to offer and contact us to seek opportunities to collaborate in the areas of prevention.
I hope you will take the time to explore our website and reach out to us through prevmed@northwestern.edu.
You can also follow us on social media on Twitter @NUPrevMed.