The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (formerly Harvard School of Public Health, as HSPH; now also referred to the Harvard Chan School, The T.H. Chan School, The T.H. Chan School of Public Health, or still simply The Chan School of Public Health) is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University, is with the adjacent Harvard Medical School located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Mission Hill. HSPH is considered a globally significant school focusing on health in the United States. The school grew out of the Harvard-MIT School for Health Officers, the nation's first graduate training program in population health, which was founded in 1913 and became Harvard School of Public Health in 1922. Julio Frenk, the Minister of Health of Mexico from 2000 to 2006 and a former executive director of the World Health Organization (WHO), had become the new dean of the school in January 2009.
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is one of the most selective and prestigious public health schools in the world. In 2006, the middle 50 percent of the incoming class had an incoming GPA between 3.50 and 3.75 (out of 4.0). About half of students already hold a medical doctorate (M.D. or D.O.), and many of the others already hold another advanced professional or doctoral degree upon admission (typically a DPM, DDS/DMD, PhD, JD, or MBA). Students at the school are drawn from around the world, with about 40 percent of the student body coming from outside of the United States.