Public Health and Preventive Medicine departmental records

The Department of Public Health and Preventative Medicine (PHPM) was officially founded in 1941 to further work that was already being focused on in a less-official manner in Portland, OR. When E.C. Brown, a local ophthalmologist, passed away, he left his wealth and Portland city property to fund social hygiene (later known as public health), family life, and sex education, especially the prevention of venereal disease. An advisory board was appointed for the trust and Dr. Adolph Weinzirl, the Portland City Health Officer and graduate of UOMS (now OHSU) was named as Foundation Director. Weinzirl established the Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine when he accepted a position as a full-time faculty member at UOMS in 1941. By 1949, PHPM could afford two teaching staff, Weinzirl and Dr. Carl Hopkins, as well as a secretary. By the 1960s, they were able to expand and hire more faculty, and the department continued to grow in stability and financial security through the 1980s and 1990s, developing into a sturdy and secure program with many faculty-teachers, administrators, and students.

In late 1992, Katherine (Katie) J. Riley, Ed.D., was hired as the department administrator and an adjunct faculty member. She had been a department administrator at UCLA and had taught classes there and at community colleges. She was charged with establishing the financial budget and records for the department, assisting with development of residency records, goals, objectives, and developing the educational offerings, including the MPH program. Riley drafted the proposal by the end of the year and also drafted a proposal for the Oregon Health Policy Institute (OHPI). The OHPI was submitted as another partnership among OHSU, Oregon State University, and Portland State University (PSU). Riley was later asked to become a full-time faculty member. She became part of McCarty’s grant projects on substance abuse treatment and developed and taught courses in Women’s Health Epidemiology and Adolescent Risky Behavior Epidemiology; she also became the Director of Education for the Department. A scholarship was founded in 2009 when Riley retired and a travel scholarship was named in her honor to assist students making presentations at conferences.

In 2015, OHSU and PSU joined efforts to create the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. Together, the institutions work with over 150 faculty members that teach, research, and provide service activities for both the institutions and the larger Portland community.

Taken in part from departmental history by Katherine J. Riley, Ed.D., Assistant Professor Emerita, http://wayback.archive-it.org/8239/20170614195631/http://www.ohsu.edu/xd/education/schools/school-of-medicine/departments/clinical-departments/public-health/about/upload/PHPM-History.pdf