Message from the Chair
From its beginning in 1956 as the Department of Preventive Medicine, this department’s scholars have been pioneers in population science and preventive medicine, achieving breakthroughs on public health problems in California, across the country, and around the world. The department has grown significantly since those early days, bringing the Division of Biostatistics into the fold in the 1980s and doubling the faculty in just the last decade.
Today, the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics stands at the center of many of UCSF’s initiatives in population health, data science, informatics, and health services research. Nearly everything done on this campus that involves human participants involves the department, either because we’ve trained the people doing the work, we collaborate with people doing the work, or we are the drivers of the work.
Our primary faculty – many of whom are world-renowned experts in their fields – are breaking new ground in diseases of aging, global health, biostatistics, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. We are also critical collaborators with other prominent research units, including the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute, the Institute for Global Health Sciences, the Institute for Health Policy Studies, and others.
The multiple data sets housed in the department or accessed through the department — including the Greater Bay Area Cancer Registry, clinical data from UCSF Health and the San Francisco Department of Public Health, digital cohort data from Health eHeart or COVID-19 Citizen Science, and other trial and cohort data available through the San Francisco Coordinating Center — also provide valuable information for anyone conducting population studies.
Our commitment to our educational mission remains steadfast. In 2024, our Master’s in Clinical Research celebrated its 20th year of providing outstanding training to students, fellows and faculty in the disciplines required for the conduct of human research. Since 2010, we've offered our PhD in Epidemiology and Translational Sciences, and its graduates now contribute in academia, industry and departments of public health. We recently launched a Master’s Degree in Health Data Science to respond to the ever-growing amount of data available for health research, and are building curriculum offerings in clinical informatics and artificial intelligence. Our educational programs offer training in clinical and translational sciences for a broad range of learners, including undergraduate to postgraduate trainees, faculty transitioning to independence, and colleagues outside UCSF from industry and elsewhere interested in learning what we have to offer.
In 2025, we undertook a department-wide strategic planning process and developed a Strategic Plan that now guides department programming and investment. The discretionary programs and activities in our department support our mission and my priorities: 1) Happy and productive people, 2) Teaching research methods, and 3) Improving population health and health equity. In accordance with Federal and State law and University policy, our department does not discriminate on the basis of age, gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, health, or disability. For detailed information, please visit the UCSF Office for Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination. In all of our endeavors, we try to embody UCSF PRIDE Values and Principles of Community.
I invite you to read more about our Strategic Plan, our scholarship, and our training programs, and consider contacting us about new opportunities – we are always open to collaboration.
-Mark Pletcher, MD, MPH, Chair